


Cicatrix

by roxymissrose



Series: Cicatrix [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Brainwashing, M/M, Minor Character Death, Psychological Torture, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-01
Updated: 2013-07-01
Packaged: 2017-12-16 18:09:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 64,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/865042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roxymissrose/pseuds/roxymissrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Cum Gladio Et Sale", With Sword and Salt. That's the Hunter's motto, engraved on the shield Dean Winchester wears with pride, more or less, as part of the Hunter/FBI Supernormal Management and Containment division—Vic Henriksen calls it Monster Squad for short. When he was nine years old, Dean left his baby brother to die in a house fire—his life has been all about atonement since then.<br/>Azazel, with no Lucifer endgame in the picture, is raising a crop of special children to be the generals of the army he's building to take over the world—the typical megalomaniac gameplan. Little Sam is shaping up to be his favorite.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dean

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on 6-26- 2013 for the Spn_J2 Big Bang 2013
> 
> All the wonderful artwork in the story was created by .

**2003**

_A chilly October wind rattled loose window panes, forcing its way under the age -warped door._  
The wind was picking up, the temperature was dropping, though the forecast had called for a mild night, unseasonably warm.

No one in the room knew, or cared …. 

The Idyll Wile Inn was an old motel, built back when they were called motor courts. The building was a horseshoe, with all the rooms opening onto it. Dean loved places laid out like the Inn—made it easy to keep an eye on his baby and she was protected from idiots in the street. 

The rooms were nothing to write home about—the furniture was chipped and cracked, sun-faded, like the paint on the walls. The linens and decorations meant to be homey touches were decades out of fashion. But the comfortable beds were dressed with clean sheets worn soft and smooth; the towels in the bathroom were bigger than Kleenex and soft like the sheets. 

In place of a TV, there was just an old radio with big dials on the face. While normally no TV would have been a deal breaker, the lack of it was more than made up for by the bathroom's shower, a huge damn thing, big enough for two grown men to fit comfortably. The hot water was abundant and the pressure was a dream. The walls were nice and thick. _That_ was a good thing, because at the moment two grown men were making excellent use of that great, big shower. 

Caleb was cursing loudly and colorfully, making the kind of noise that brought cops and embarrassing explanations. Dean shifted, knees squeaking against the wet bottom of the tub, and swallowed again, rubbing Caleb's dick against the roof of his mouth, sliding it just a fraction deeper into his throat. Spit and precome filled his mouth, slid down his chin. Caleb moaned; beat against the wall with his fists. "Fuck…that's it, can't…"

Dean swallowed again, rubbed the pad of his finger over the soft muscle of Caleb's hole and moaned himself the way it opened to that slight pressure, come and lube leaking out around his fingers before the hot water whisked it away. A few seconds after, Caleb's hips jerked forward. He let out a surprised groan—Dean's signal to relax and swallow. He liked that Caleb always sounded as if orgasm was an unexpected result of getting his dick sucked. 

Caleb fell back against the tiles and huffed out a long, satisfied sigh, drawing his hand through the wet spikes of Dean's hair. "That was…yeah, pretty good, Sweetcheeks, pretty good…." 

Fingers trailed down to cup Dean's head. The move spoke of intimacy and Dean didn't really approve of that. He shook Caleb's hand off. "Fuck you, don't call me that. 'Sides, it was freakin' amazing and you know it," he said. 

"Okay, it was…better'n pretty good." Caleb laughed. "So egotistical."

"It's not egotistical if it's true." Dean rolled to his feet, wiping his mouth on Caleb's shoulder. He ignored the 'jerk' grumbled into his ear, just enjoyed the excellent water pressure and plentiful heat. Caleb got out first, slapping Dean's ass before he grabbed one of the surprisingly fluffy towels. "Don't drown," he said and left the room.

Dean loved showers— loved fucking in showers, loved showers when they were like this, a nearly erotic experience on their own. The Idyll Wile just put itself at the top of his favorite places list. If the breakfast provided with the room was half-way decent, he was officially labeling it Nirvana. Hell, even if the breakfast was shit, _free_ breakfast still made it top of the list.

When Dean finally pulled himself out of the shower, the room was empty, but an involuntary glance towards Caleb's side of the room showed his bag was still shoved up under the desk. He rubbed the towel a little harder through his hair and tossed it on the floor. 

He was halfway through a science fiction paperback he'd found in a dresser drawer a couple of motels ago before Caleb came strolling back in the room, jeans done up but his shirt open, putting a scattering of bruises and bites on display. That good ache hit Dean again, doubled—tripled—as he eyed the path his teeth had taken the length of Caleb's chest. 

Caleb snorted when he realized what Dean was looking at, and tossed a coke and a bag of chips at him. "Here—dinner. Don’t say I don't treat you right."

"You don't treat me right, old man. Where'd you go? Grabbing snacks don’t take that long."

"Talkin' to a Hunter, Shane Mackey from here in Kansas." 

"Talking, hanh? That's what they're calling it now?"

"Dude," Caleb held his hands out, "I ain't got the _energy_ to fuck somebody else right now."

"Whatever, old guy." Dean cracked open the coke and peered at Caleb as he took a long drink, said, "You know it’s okay with me, right?"

Caleb grinned. "Asshole. So. Wanna tell me what's really bugging you…it's the gig tomorrow, right? That's what Shane was chewin' my ear off about. It's a big one, sure, but you'll do fine. Y'always do. You're Dean Winchester, the unstoppable, the invincible."

Dean laughed softly. "Yeah, I wish. I'm just…I don’t know." He pulled himself higher up the bed, tossed the book on a side table and flicked the covers back. Caleb let himself fall to the bed, tucked his arms under his head, and contemplated the ceiling.

"Not lyin', Winchester. You're a force of nature. Yer gonna kick this thing in the ass and come up roses—like always."

"Right, dude." Dean kneed Caleb in the side, before shoving down and lining up shoulder to shoulder with Caleb. "It's just a…I don't know, weird feeling I have, like…something's coming at me. Like it's hanging over me, breathin' down my neck."

Caleb eyed Dean—they'd both come to respect Dean's gut feelings. "Tell ya what, I'll keep an extra-vigilant watch on your back, but I really think with the firepower we're going in with? Piece of cake, dude, piece of cake."

=+= 

Dean was still awake long after Caleb had dropped off. He punched up the pillow, forcing his face into its softener-scented swell. Sleep might be evading him but Caleb was having no such trouble. Dean lay listening to his partner's heavy, even breathing from the next bed, the bed frame squeaking as Caleb moved in his sleep. Dean shifted uneasily. Knew he needed sleep to be on point the next day, but the more he chased it, the less likely sleep seemed possible. Thoughts wandered without stopping, from the living to the dead, from the long list of his screw-ups to the pitifully short list where he'd managed not to fuck up...and as always, it came back to John Winchester, long dead and gone. Whirling thoughts slammed to a stop when his brother's face floated up from the deepest, darkest pit of his mind. The brother he'd killed.

Dean's chest tightened, squeezed in a painful grip of shame and guilt. He forced a breath in, another and another, until it wasn't a chore to breathe anymore. Forced that damning image back down in the dark where it belonged, with the rest of his crimes and failures….

=+= 

Dean eyed the Kevlar vest unhappily before manhandling it onto his body with an annoyed grunt. The damn thing weighed a ton, what with being studded with silver knobs and plates at critical points. FBI was stenciled across the chest, SMAC stenciled across the back: Supernormal Management and Containment. Fuckin' thing made him sweat like a whore in church. He hated wearing it but when you worked with the FBI's Monster Squad, you followed their rules. And you never, ever called them "Smack." They had a way of letting you know how much they disliked that.

The noise in the conference room rose, and Dean smiled to himself. He wasn't the only one less than pleased at having to wear SMAC gear. Quite a few of the other Hunters—all guys he'd worked with before— were grumbling as they struggled into the vests. Some of them cursed out loud trying to get the gauntlets, also studded with silver plates, to settle in a comfortable position. The damn things were a bitch to get on, but Dean had to admit they came in handy sometimes. Nothing like punching a wolf in the face and dropping it in its tracks. 

He flexed the gauntlets, tilting them from side to side, watching the way the weak morning sun coming through the windows made the silver glint. That close to his face, Dean was aware of the way they smelled; old leather and sweat and silver cleaner, a subtle acidic odor, a familiar scent that used to mean home.

A cough startled him out of his memories—the room had slowly filled while he'd been distracted, agents and local law officers filing in. Someone started coffee, and someone else dropped the volume on the TV in the rear wall of the conference room. A couple of boxes of donuts got tossed on one of the conference tables and Dean huffed, pleased and amused at once. Bound to be donuts in the cop house, he figured. He scanned a box, stuffed a glazed in his mouth and snagged a jelly-filled before making his way to the coffee. Caleb came wandering through the crowd, greeting those he knew and sizing up the ones he didn't. He cast Dean a look, smirked. "I kin hear you whining from 'cross the room."

"I didn't say a damn thing," Dean protested.

"See what a whiner you are? Kin hear you even with your mouth closed." Caleb grinned. "Turn around; I'll do you up, 'Cheeks."

"Goddamn it, Cee, knock it off with that Sweetcheeks shit already," Dean growled and gulped the hot black coffee to wash down his donuts. He was patient with letting Caleb adjust the vest's straps—in his opinion Caleb fussed too much. Too damn soft-hearted, that one.

"Okay. Squared away." Caleb patted him on the back, then quick as that planted a sneaky kiss on the back of Dean's neck, right where the short hairs gave way to soft skin, and it shot a shiver down Dean's spine. Caleb danced back with a laugh, narrowly avoiding getting an elbow in the kidneys. "Watch it, Winchester!"

"Dickface," Dean snapped, but before he could say more, a couple of the Monster Squad guys come strolling into the room. 

"Winchester, Blackwell. Making trouble already, I see."

Dean smirked at the SMAC guys pushing through the hunters and local law already milling around the coffee. He knew this crew, had worked with them before. He'd been backup with them on a really weird vampire nesting—vamps had run roughshod over a little backwoods village, made it their personal blood bank. That shocked the shit out of everyone, vamps mobbed up like that, seeing as they usually weren't that ambitious. The lead on that job had been the very same good-looking sonafabitch strutting through the door like he owned the damn place. Dean dipped his head to hide a widening smile. Vic Henriksen looked same as he always did, compact muscle under deep coffee skin that was smooth as silk. Dean knew every dip and valley of that body and the dark eyes pinning him knew his just as well. Henriksen grinned that smart-ass, lop-sided grin, cocky as always but obviously genuinely pleased to see Dean. "Well, well, Mr. Winchester…looks like today's your lucky day, hunh?" 

Dean was glad to see him, too. Strictly in a professional context because competent help was always appreciated. If his heart beat a tic faster, it was just adrenaline, getting psyched for the job. Dean bounced a little on the balls of his feet, tugged his belt into a more comfortable fit. 

"Dude." Caleb snorted softly at his side. "Upstairs brain on the job," he whispered.

"Yeah, yeah, fuck you," Dean huffed. That was the problem with practically living in the same pair of pants with someone…they knew when you wanted in some other guy's pants. "So, why'd Director Waller take time out to invite me specifically to this little tea party, Henriksen?"

Before he could answer, a white guy built like a stack of cinder-blocks moved out from behind Henriksen, a half smile on his long face. Carl Reidy—Dean remembered him from the vamp job, that and another job that Reidy'd been lead on—busting up a 'walker pack. Carl was sharp, observant, tough as rawhide, and that translated to being a bad-ass under fire; Dean could appreciate that. Dean nodded a greeting. "Reidy." 

Reidy flashed him a smile, one that widened into a smirk when he glanced over at Henriksen. "I'm sure Assistant Director Waller invited you 'cause you're just a special little flower like that, Winchester. Pleasure to be working with you again. I'm sure I can speak for my partner on that. I think he's _real_ glad to see you."

And that sharp, observant nature also led to him being kind of a smart-ass…whatever. Dean moved his attention back to Henriksen and ignored Reidy's stupid snicker.

"This job's big enough that we need our best on it, Winchester and that's you," Henriksen said. "Not tryin' t'soap you, it's just a fact. I'll fill you in on the particulars as soon as the Sheriff—that's Sheriff Carlyle, over there—has briefed his men. You know most of the Hunters that are coming on board, right?"

"Sure, "Dean said, and Caleb nodded.

"This here freak fight ring," Caleb asked, "is it that big a deal?" He winced. "Don't mean that any ring's not a big deal, it's just…there's a hell of a lot guys milling around here. We usually just swoop in on whatever squat the ring's set up in and bag all the supes, arrest the perps." 

"And save people, if we can." Dean made a face. It was getting to be, the freaks into this type of thing wanted more blood, more show. Nothing makes a show like sweeping bums off the street and tossing them in a fight with a wolf, or a few chupacabras….

"Yeah. We got word that there's some big time sonofabitch supposed to show up, someone on the top tier." Henriksen stopped, narrowed his eyes at Dean, "Can you take a minute? I've got something I wanna talk about that needs some privacy."

They walked off together down one of the hallways, rubber soles squeaking against the glass-shiny floor tiles. Henriksen motioned Dean towards an alcove, fixed him with a hard stare. Dean leaned against the wall, crossed arms over his chest as best he could and waited. Fine. He was willing to give Henriksen his little moment of drama.

Henriksen sighed, wiped his hand slowly over his mouth and then said, "Winchester…look. The word is that this muckamuck running the ring is more than some rich motherfucker with a hard-on for death matches—he's a demon." 

"Well— _yeah."_ Dean was hardly impressed by that bit of intel; it was obvious as fuck there were demons involved in most of these fightrings, along with a variety of supes. Hell, the sheer number of Hunters milling around the conference room told him that they expected to come up against a Boss Demon, a Second Rung at the least. These days most local law enforcement handled a lone, lower rung demon, a were or two, just fine on their own—even a nest of vamps wasn't an automatic SMAC/Hunter call anymore. But demons mobbed up together, that was a whole 'nother kettle of fish….

Henriksen went on, "Yeah, see, it's more than that. This one's rumored to be a _Big_ Boss demon. Like, 'don't throw its name around' kinda big. We're thinking…maybe Lillith. Or, maybe the demon that. You know. Your family."

"What the fuck—why am I just finding this out now? That fucker's been priority one since Bobby Singer was a pup!" Dean was pissed as hell. How could he have _missed_ this? Where were the signs? Should have been clear trace, probably was and they just…god damn it. Pop should have seen it. _He_ should have seen it…his whole life, he's been tracking demon sign. How the fuck had he dropped the ball? 

"Shit…" Dean scrubbed hands through his hair savagely, flung his arms wide. "All right, all right—so we get that bastard cornered— _maybe._ What do we do then? You know demons are hard as shit to get dug out once they latch on a meatsuit. We can flip the low level ones, sure. But those upper echelon bastards…holy water, salt, hell, _exorcism_ doesn't much make 'em do more than sneeze. My dad claimed there was a surefire way to kill it, but he never found it, far's I know. But I don't…." Dean ended with his hands on his hips, one over his gun, the other over an HW grenade. Both of them as useless against that monster as he was….

A squeak against the glass-like tiles alerted them to company coming. Caleb was headed their way, leading some grizzled old guy who looked like he had a serious problem with the world. The old guy came to a stop, looked Dean up and down…Dean had the feeling he'd just lost points on some double secret test he didn't know he was taking. The guy tilted his head back the barest inch he could to make eye contact with Dean. Said, "You worryin' about that big Boss Demon. Well, don't. That's my job. Taking out the big ones is where I come in." 

Old Dude stopped, took a breath, and Dean got another hard, assessing look, the kind Dean figured he'd stopped being on the end of when John Winchester died. It put his back up—no one living had the privilege of looking at Dean like that 'cept maybe Bobby Singer. Henriksen palmed Dean's shoulder and squeezed, slight, quick, and said, "Daniel Elkins, meet Dean Winchester."

"Winchester. Nice to meet you finally. Your dad was a hell of a hunter. Heard you don’t do bad yourself."

"Thanks," Dean twisted a bit uncomfortably. Truth to tell, he hardly remembered John Winchester and had long since gotten used to thinking of Bobby Singer as his father. Not that he didn't respect the memory of John—it was just that when everything went to shit, Bobby was the one who'd taken him in and cared for him when no one else would. More than that, acted like it was a damn privilege, crazy old sonafabitch. 

"If it hadn't been for John Winchester and Bobby Singer, we hunters would still be working the job underground," Elkins was saying and Dean nodded. "Can't say I dig the paperwork, and this registering every crappy little job is for the birds. Though I'd sure be lying if I said I don’t enjoy the steady paychecks, and damn if the benefits don't help smooth the way." He gave a dry little cough Dean assumed was meant to be a chuckle. 

Dean considered the old man, and decided he might as well be sociable—the man had known his father. "Yes sir, I hear you on the paperwork. Rather feed my thumbs through a wood chipper."

Elkins gave another dry little cough of amusement, "Well, I got something here that's gonna make you want to hold onto 'em." 

Henriksen pushed the door open on an empty office and Elkins gestured for Dean to follow him in. He took a wooden box out of the bag he was holding. The box was old, had the vaguely mildewed, dusty smell of very old wood. Elkins set it down on one of the desks and pulled the lid up. Cradled inside was a gun, an old military-style revolver, engraved with a pattern of vines and what looked to be Latin words running the long length of the barrel. The box held an almost full rack of bullets as well, handmade and each engraved with a number. Elkins ran a finger along the gun's slim barrel. "This gun…this gun was made to kill a demon." 

Dean huffed. "It's a great-looking gun, what is it—a Colt, right, one of those Indian War era military revolvers? I mean, it's antique and it's cool, but it's not magical."

Elkins and Henriksen both looked at Dean like he was an idiot. "Well," the old man said. "I have used it. Once or twice. And it did do what it was advertised to do. In my book, that makes it pretty god damn magical."

Dean stopped himself from dropping his head like a scolded schoolboy, muttered "Yes sir."

"Samuel Colt himself made it. Made sure it was a weapon of power. Dean, this is the thing that's gonna end the demon who killed your mother, your father, and more than likely your brother—" Elkins held up his hand when Dean tried to interrupt. "This is the weapon your dad, rest his soul, spent half a lifetime looking for. Your dad…he had a feeling. Before he died, he sent me a box full of notes and speculation and hopes. It was good enough, Dean. Helped us find _this."_

Dean stared at Elkins, open-mouthed with shock and a growing, cautious, feeling of hope. "I didn't know…didn't know he was that close…."

"No reason why you would, son, you were barely out of grade school." Elkins shook his head. "Well. Between John's notes and mine, and hunters from 'round the States, we found it. We get one good shot at that demonic pile of crap, and this gun won’t just return that thing to hell—it'll wipe it out of this world and the next, _forever._ No coming back."

 _No coming back…_ the words rang in Dean's head all the way back to the conference room. To wipe a demon out totally…not just send it back to hell so that in a few decades it crawled back out to spew its filth all over again, but to truly destroy it. If this weapon worked the way Elkins said it would, than John's life wasn't a waste—here was the thing that was going to erase the monster that ripped his family to pieces. Dean could barely believe it. He'd finally have the chance to kill Azazel. It'd be a drop in the well of penance he paid for killing his baby brother, but if they managed to wipe that fucker out, he'd finally breathe a little easier….

=+= 

"All right, listen up, everyone. Sheriff Carlyle's gonna bring us up to speed here—Sheriff?"

The sheriff stepped up. "This fight ring's been squatted here for almost a month. Things have been fairly low key, quiet—as these things go—but recently our man inside let us know it's been active as an anthill with a stick shoved in. Their whole operation's holed up in the Gattison Mansion, out in Bayer's Wood. It's isolated—roads leading to it are overgrown, and it's rare anyone goes out there." The sheriff hesitated, and then leaned back against the table behind him, a rueful grin on his face. "Well, nowadays at least. Before the roads got too bad, we used to have to roust kids outta there from time to time—that's how we know it. 'Cause none of us here were ever the kinda kids to head out there. Am I right?" He looked at his men, the grin spreading just a bit. All around the room, men were shifting and coughing and flashing some shamed-faced grins.

"Yup. Kids find places like that like they got radar. Then they get jobs and cars and forget all about getting high in the dark in a rat trap. And I say get high when I mean get laid—"

That got a few chuckles, and Carlyle nodded, went on when they quieted again. "The place is big, still solid. Not gonna be easy to crack. Our target's the second floor. The fights go on up there; they use a doggone full size pool as the staging ground. Throw the poor fucks in together and fish out the winners." 

On the TV, a floor plan of the mansion popped up on the screen. Carlyle pointed out the pool, and how rooms were arranged around it. "We think they're camping in these rooms, but the fighters are in the basement. According to our guy, there's a were and a shapeshifter on property, possibly two. There's two, maybe more, humans, but possibly possessed. If they are, they're being kept separate from the other demons. That makes our man uncertain if they are or aren't humans." The sheriff exchanged looks with the SMAC agents and shrugged. "No one gets close to them but some bastard named Uncle Luke." 

"Uncle Luke?" one of the LEOs asked.

"That's all we got on this one, it's a sure bet that's a pseud. There's nothing in the system about him. At all." Sheriff Carlyle huffed. "Anyway. There's pretty thick cover: good for us, unfortunately good for them. Still we got the home court advantage against those bastards…" The Sheriff sighed. "My men and I will be going for the front door, making a shit ton of noise. While we got the monsters occupied, SMAC will go in the back."

There was some grumbling, and some whispers about _bait._ Henriksen narrowed his eyes at the cops.

"Anybody who thinks my men have the easier job, please feel free to change places. You guys are going to be behind the HW trucks, and they're every one of them manned by experienced Hunters. Don’t forget our snipers out there—they been to more than a few monster rodeos. Everyone on this job is handpicked, by me, and I only pick the best of the best. Okay? Now, this thing is more than just a bunch of sick motherfuckers mobbed up to watch something die hideously and make bank doing it…" Henriksen stopped, glanced at Dean before continuing. "Appears what's running this thing is a top echelon demon, a very big, very bad, _Boss_ Demon."

The noise level rose as the men absorbed the information. Henriksen shouted out over the noise, "This kind of thing's been popping up lately." Everyone's attention snapped back to Henriksen, and he continued at a normal tone. 

_"Kids_ have been starring in these fights recently, early to late teens. Turns out, some of these kids have been reported missing since about…ten, fifteen years ago. Which leads us to believe, they were stolen for this."

Caleb and Dean exchanged a look. Rumors that had been circulating through Hunter circles the last few years proved to be right. The thought of kids in the hands of these sick fucks…ice crawled through Dean's gut. 

Something was heating up. There was some game going on in underworld circles that Hunters had missed or maybe just plain misread. Dean's stomach slowly flipped, thinking of little kids being minced up in the meat grinder of those fight rings.

Elkin's spoke up then, taking the floor from Henriksen. "If you're asking yourself why, well, it seems like maybe those demonic bastards are doing it more than for kicks. We've been trying to backtrack these kids, but most of them show up dead ends. Dead families, foster kids, street kids…no ties. We've been working this real close to the vest, not wanting to tip off the enemy and maybe starting a scramble to get rid of…evidence. Clues."

Caleb eyed Dean. They were thinking the same thing. Just how long _had_ SMAC been working on this? How long had they known kids were being used like this? Caleb asked, "We got a name for this fucker?"

Elkins spoke up. "Might have. Azazel, my contact swore it. Mind you, my contact was none too…reliable."

Dean knew what that meant—the old guy had more than likely tortured the hell out of some low-level scum sucker. Always risky intel, but…sometimes demons didn't lie. 

Henriksen wrapped up the briefing, and the agents and cops finished prepping. The last stage was attaching a huge, thick badge to their vests, silver-coated iron fashioned into a pentagram set in a thick ring. Inside the ring were engraved other, more ancient symbols. Together, they made a Solomon's seal, SMAC's seal. On the Hunters badges, there was a little extra. On the outside of the ring was inscribed the Hunters' motto, "cum gladio et sale", _With Sword and Salt._ The badges were also protection against demon possession. Helpful, if not in any way fool-proof. Most of the Hunters had anti-possession tattoos, and more than likely some of the feds did too, but wearing the badge was better than leaving yourself an open invitation as a demon ride.

=+= 

Mixed groups of FBI, LEOs and Hunters milled around each vehicle, some smoking, some chatting. A few guys leaned back against the armored sides of the vehicle, eyes closed, faking calm. Dean knew how to do that…he'd been studying that since he was a kid.

"Hey." Caleb tapped Dean, pointed out a group off to one side. Henriksen was standing with the men there, deep in conversation. Weaving in and out of the men's legs were some of the biggest fucking dogs Dean had ever seen. They were hip height; thin bones laid over with lean muscle and covered with wiry, dark fur. Their long jaws hung open, thin, pale tongues swept over cream fangs. Dean watched them move, and shivered. There was something off about them. One of the dogs turned its head and seemed to stare right at Dean; too much awareness gleamed out of bright red eyes. 

"What the fuck…" Dean muttered. The dog snorted in disinterest and leaned against the agent holding its leash. Red eyes narrowed in pleasure when his handler reached down and scratched its ears vigorously, like it was somebody's backyard beagle instead of the obvious lovechild of a werewolf and Marmaduke.

Henriksen sauntered up, smirking when he caught Dean's uneasy gaze. "Seen our K-9 backup, hunh? Those men and their dogs are going to single out the humans for us. Takes the guesswork out of who's who." 

"Hunh." Caleb leaned around Dean and studied the dogs, the men. "Yeah? They're good at that, I guess?"

"Yep. That's what they've been trained for. Bred to be tough motherfuckers, able to stand up against most supes. They're Irish wolfhound mixes." Henriksen looked a little sideways as he said that. 

Dean's gut twinged. Henriksen sounded entirely too casual for Dean's taste and that usually meant something was about to stink up the joint. "What the fuck are they mixed with, Satan?" Dean asked. 

Henriksen laughed, a little too high-pitched for it to be reassuring. "Close enough," he said. He slapped Dean on the shoulder, letting his hand curl around his neck before walking off, calling for everyone to load. 

Dean knew damn well Henriksen had no intention of answering his question—which was pretty much an answer in itself. He glanced back over his shoulder as he walked away, watching the dogs being loaded. They were all eerily silent. He worked with dogs often, lots of hunters used them to track supes, and he was used to them barking and whining, dashing around and making _noise._ He shook his head and jumped into the vehicle, dropped into the seat Caleb held for him. Working with any flavor of supe went against the grain. That's not what John Winchester had died for…it wasn't the world Dean worked for, not one where supernatural beings had a place. Dean dropped his head back against the vinyl headrest and sighed. And when he was king of the world, the whole ball of wax would roll the way he wanted. Until then, best that he just shut his face and do what needed to be done.

=+= 

The vehicle's overhead lights went from white to red, and conversation dropped to whispers. Carl punched Dean on the arm in passing as he and Henriksen moved to the front, where the operations command center was set up. Dean sat the bench with the rest of the crew, more than happy to leave being head honcho to Henriksen. He buckled in and waited, trying to clear his mind and not having great success. Now that it was almost game time, no one was pretending to be cool and unflappable anymore because they all knew—being the good guys gave you no guarantee of coming through untouched.

Raids like this were dangerous as fuck, and even worse when humans were in the mix. Demons were easy. They were straightforward; they wanted one thing, chaos. There were rules and defenses that monsters couldn't break, defenses that always worked depending on the skill and speed of the Hunters. Humans—they fucked up everything. They were unpredictable, no rules applied to them and the only defense was shoot first and accurately. Dean knew it was probably a touch weird he'd always rather deal with monsters than humans. Monsters he got, humans…not so much.

Caleb pushed Dean back out of his head with a wicked elbow. "Hey, where'd you go?"

Dean didn't waste time answering Caleb. He just snapped open his holster, checking his gun. Around him he heard the snap-click of others doing the same; checking the guns made to fire mixed silver-iron rounds, checking holy water grenades, checking salt, knives, the fastenings on gloves, boots, and vest. He had Caleb check his fastenings and then turned around and did it for Caleb. Didn't matter that they'd done it already—there was no such thing as being over-prepared. Caleb chuckled as Dean worked over his vest. "Thought you said I was bein' fussy…"

"Shut up," Dean muttered, smacking the last buckle as he snugged it tight.

=+= 

They were deep in the woods now, and the smooth road they'd traveled had become a kidney-jarring wrangle over deep rutted, almost overgrown tracks through tangle and dirt. Dean heard Vic issuing orders from up front, okaying deployment of the HW trucks, and heard each of the vans checking in, all in place and ready to go. Quickly, Vic came out to them and said, "Run through again. We've got our snipers in the woods, ready to go. Our guys on the scene report that the roads leading all the way in are passable, but the woods are thick enough out there that the scumbags have every expectation of not being made. Security is simple—thugs with guns, that's about it."

Dean snorted. "Thugs my ass," he muttered. No doubt demons patrolled the perimeters, probably with 'hounds…he gripped the pentagram on the front of his vest, started muttering an exorcism. He had the words down pat, but in the heat of battle he sometimes flubbed a pronunciation or occasionally substituted whole different words. He wasn't top flight with Latin, not like his Dad was. Whatever…between an iron axe for the hellhounds, holy water and a can-do attitude for the demons, they were good to go. He ran a finger around the big silver pentagram and hoped he was right.

=+= 

Moonlight glowed in the branches overhead, leaves filtering the light into dots and dashes of silver across tree trunks, on the ground. Dean shuffled forward, three arms lengths away from Caleb at his left and Caleb's buddy, Shane Mackey, at his right. Hunters and Monster Squad alike moved in a chain as they edged closer to the property, one silent step at a time. Dean trod lightly as possible, careful not to step wrong. Thankfully, the leaf litter on the forest floor was thick and muffled footsteps well. They wove carefully through branches and shrubs and tangled snarls of vines, eyes searching, waiting. Dean's heart slammed in his chest, felt like it was beating in time to his steps. Sweat dampened his hairline and his breath came quicker. Fear had him almost high with the adrenalin rush. This was what he was good at, what he'd been raised to do. Find evil bastards and snuff them out. He let the feeling fill him, settle his nerves….

His earpiece came to life, Vic muttering, "Okay, my guys, head towards Blue…" meaning the east side of the mansion. "Carlyle, have your group push on to Red…"—meaning the front of the mansion.

Dean couldn't see Caleb now but knew he'd heard as well. He turned eastward, angling towards a break in the undergrowth, and ran right into one of the perimeter guards. The guard grinned, and Dean had the brief impression of too many teeth. He muttered _Christo,_ triggered the HW grenade he snatched from a clip on his vest. The water sprayed in a wide arc, wetting down the guard and streaming off leaves and branches in the way. Dean didn't stop to see results; he was bringing his Colt 1911 to bear the second he'd set off the grenade. The guard grinned wider, water dripping down his face, but his eyes didn't shift and his skin didn't steam—instead, he whipped his own gun up to fire, snapped, "Sic 'em!" 

Dean heard a deep growl behind him but didn't react to that, his concentration on what was in front of him. Dean snapped off a shot just as the other man did, hit the guard between the eyes. The guy went down just as a giant fist hit Dean in the side and knocked him to his knees—the vest had done its job. With any luck his ribs were just bruised.

Being knocked off his feet saved him; the dog behind him overshot, and instead of grabbing his neck, it clamped down on his arm. Brilliant pain ripped through him and he fumbled for his gun. The dog—just a fucking Rottweiler, and Dean was beyond thankful for that—jerked him across the path. Seemed the dog was trying to drag him back into the shrubbery and that was bound to be a very bad thing. The dog growled, its jaws loosening to get a better grip. Getting that second's reprieve, Dean snagged a knife off his vest and hoped for the best. There was a pop, and a hot explosion of blood. 

"Get up, quick." Caleb kicked the dog away and yanked Dean to his feet. Dean barely touched the ground before they were running, Caleb's hand wrapped tight around Dean's wrist. The pain in his arm raced and throbbed but he could move it, so Dean counted it good.

He almost stumbled when Vic's voice boomed over a loudspeaker, startling him as it set off frantic activity. "Now!" 

The woods lit up, the dark shredded as the HW trucks lurched to life. Like some scene out of _Mad Max_ the trucks surged out of cover, two Hunters apiece manning the water guns, spraying holy water as speakers blared out an exorcism. There were three of them all going off at once, bursts of Latin, doubling, tripling words, but over that Dean heard the screaming start up. He shoved his Colt back in its holster and pulled the sawed-off out of the holster strapped to his thigh.

Holy water blasted the front of the house, showering walls and windows and pouring into doors, steaming demons, bowling humans over. Dean jerked, staggering into the agent at his shoulder. Both men started when eerie howls suddenly made a counterpoint to the blare of the exorcism, discordant sounds completely unlike the guard dogs' howling. Weird, frightening and totally unearthly, the sound weaved in and out of the electronic crackle pouring Latin into the air.

 _Hellhounds._ Dean shivered, racked his shotgun, iron and salt shot ready to go. It took him a moment to realize the unearthly howling was coming from _their_ dogs, the dogs Vic claimed were trained to separate out humans and block them from possible harm. Dean got the feeling that this was true—in theory. 

Carlyle's men blasted through the front of the decrepit mansion—anything coming out the back was fair game for the Monster Squad. Gunfire, screams filled a night that gave way to an artificial daylight as lights were quickly set up and switched on. Waves of demons smoked out on the express to hell, while their human accomplices broke against a barricade of agents and hunters.

Dean, Caleb, and a small group of hunters charged through the eastern wing of the house. Dean spotted Reidy and his men fighting a mixed group of demons and humans in front of a marble staircase. A small group, but the demons in the mix made it a losing fight until Dean and some other hunters jumped in. Salt and holy water and extra firepower evened the odds, until they were left with terrified humans and abandoned corpses.

Dean took a moment to breathe, sweeping the area with a glance, and was surprised to note that the interior actually seemed to be in good repair, in contrast to the outside of the place. His overwhelming impression was marble, tons of it, along with gilt wood, mahogany…and a line of losers in gowns and tuxes, spread out face down in a clear space on the floor. The local cops were snapping plasticuffs onto wrists dripping with gems. He heard Caleb snarl, "Rich people." Reidy laughed. 

Carlyle motioned them to take the stairs, and Reidy raised an eyebrow, gestured _'Up?'_ The sheriff nodded and went back to supervising the arrests. Reidy shrugged and directed his men to take the stairs. 

The staircase opened onto a wide hall on the second floor, a hall that led in turn to a huge room. There were a few other rooms along the large hall. The doors of the room at the end of the hall gaped wide, shattered and splintered and barely hanging on their hinges.

Agents peeled off the main group, kicking open doors and yanking occupants out of the room. Humans, mostly terrified, confused…some chained, some not, but all of them grateful once they realized what was happening. 

Something made Dean head straight to the last room at the end of the hall. He stepped through the shattered doors and was assaulted by over-bright light, too much noise, a god-awful stench…he blinked a moment before what he saw registered with him. An empty swimming pool, a sloppily erected chain link fence surrounding it, supported by an iron railing that circled the pool area. There were…things hanging from the railing, blood was _everywhere._ A couple of bodies that were hard to identify as human or monster lay in a far corner of the pool. Dean scrubbed at his mouth, licked dry lips. "Fuck…"

The pool was a nightmare, like a blood-splashed Hieronymus Bosch painting made three dimensional.

Dean snapped back to attention when screams rose wildly behind him. More shots rang out and then something blocked his way—he got an impression of heat and a thick animal smell overlaid with the copper/iron tang of blood. A deep, rolling snarl raised the hair on his neck, a whuff of furnace-hot breath steamed against his scalp—before another rank breath could wash over him, Dean was down, rolling forward and dodging a strike from claws like scythes. They ripped the back of his vest into streamers of canvas and netting, shrieked as they met the metal and ceramic plates sewn into the vest. He yanked a knife from its sheath and was striking as he came up. The knife lodged in something that felt like a fur-covered brick wall. A gurgling scream made him wince but he hung on, sawing, sawing and cursing. 

The were shifted its attack, going for Dean's arm and hanging up in the fucking gauntlet—Dean swore, staggered by the pain—he could feel the pressure of its teeth when they closed over the gauntlet. The muffled howl the werewolf let out when it met silver had Dean deeply grateful for having worn the fucking gauntlets, and he swore to himself never to bitch about them again. He grimly, frantically, sawed as the thing tried to pry its teeth loose of the leather and silver—Dean sawed and tore until a heavy weight smacked his thigh. His arm felt like it was being jerked out of the socket, burned like it was on fire and then the hot, sodden weight hit and rolled off his knee. Hit the ground in front of him with a thump like a rotten melon. 

The werewolf head lay at his feet, neck raggedly severed and blood fucking everywhere. The gauntlet and most of Dean's shirtsleeve was clutched in its fangs. He grabbed a holy water grenade and cracked it open. Water sluiced over his arm and the blood hissed a bit but. Clean. His arm was clean. Nothing—not a puncture, a scratch, and most blessedly of all, not a _bite._

"Thank fuck," he gasped. He let go of the fear he'd repressed while struggling, and the relief was so fucking huge, it staggered him. His hands shook violently as he raised them to wipe his face clean…terror had lent him strength he was going to pay for in spades come morning. 

They'd torn down the gate part of the chain link around the pool, the easier to get the dogs in, but left the rest of the fencing intact so the remaining fighters had only one way out—through the dogs and agents blocking the exit. Dean leaned against the fence and tried to center himself as he watched the action below. SMAC's hounds were forcing fighters back against one side of the marble tiled pool, away from the chaos around them, herding the group of—humans, monsters, hard to tell—with growls and nips. Except for the blood and ragged bits of things Dean was decidedly not looking at scattered around them, it'd be easy to take them all as victims—they were wide eyed and shaking with fear. Frightened, defenseless, huddled against each other like innocents caught up against their will.

Dean snorted. Victims, right. None of the cops or the agents were that stupid. Until they had proof that what was in the pool was human, they hung back and let the dogs sort it out. Dean stared and gradually realized that the only noise coming out of that pool was from the dogs—the fighters were silent. It was creepy as fuck. A tall, maybe-human, painted over with drying blood, pushed its way out of the knot of other fighters and rushed the hounds. Growling in a way that cemented Dean's feeling that it was a shifter or a 'walker, it struck a dog with one big fist and dropped it like a broken toy. The crack as the dog's neck broke was loud in the sudden silence.

"Fuck…my dogs…." Dean startled at the cursing. Henriksen had managed to come up behind him unnoticed. The sound of Henriksen's voice drew the fighter's attention towards the agents and hunters at the rim of the pool, and the fighter whirled around to face them. Dean got an impression of wild eyes, white teeth; there were smudges of something dark around its mouth and under one eye. Dean was shocked—not a supe, it was definitely human. Even if its strength or its behavior wasn't; Dean was sure it was a _human_ boy. 

"Stop that sonofabitch from killing my dogs!" Vic shouted. Agents jumped down into the pool, and it took several of them before the boy finally went down, fighting and snarling all the way. 

"Idiots," Henriksen growled. "Dumb ass motherfuckers…" Dean tuned him out. Henriksen didn't really mean it, and what was going on behind them was way more important than Vic and his weird-ass fretting over a pack of canine monster-killers, barely one step removed from monsterhood themselves. Dean shook his head. Vic was another one too soft-hearted for his own good, for God's sake….

Dean pushed away from the chain link and headed back out into the hall, where he heard them before he saw them, the demons, the real reason they were there. 

There was a Boss, maybe two top echelons with him. They were tricked out in bankers' bodies. Respectable, average, low-key guys—two hundred dollar haircuts, skinny suits, buffed wingtips—not the kind of guys who should be covered in blood and wearing guts like streamers. The trio boiled down the hall, heedless of the humans in their way and careless of the power they discharged, snapping and crackling in the air. 

They rolled on, made straight for the pool. They broke through agents and dogs, pulverized bone and shredded flesh like paper, intent on the fighters crouched at the bottom. The casualties around them were incidental; Dean saw they were only focused on the pool. They were like supremely vicious toddlers concentrating on what they wanted and the hell with everything else. He heard bones crack and a kid folded up like a broken puppet, dead before he hit the floor. Dean tried to pull his Colt loose; even knowing it wouldn’t do a damn thing, he couldn’t just stand there, watch the horror unfold. The shrieking escalated but Dean got the sense death was not the object here—the demons were trying to get those kids out, steal them away from SMAC's hold. No way would that happen, not as long as he breathed—

Henriksen and Reidy reached the same conclusion. They might not be able to stop them by normal means but they had a weapon that would end them, destroy them forever. 

Dean stifled a flinch at a sudden blare of sound. Latin poured out of a loudspeaker, but it wasn't the exorcism Dean expected to hear. Caleb appeared at his side from out of nowhere, one side of his face swollen and promising a hell of a show later, blood smeared across his chin and making his grin macabre. Caleb jerked his chin at the air. "Holding spell. Lock them in until—"

A shot rang out and Dean wondered for a brief second who was stupid enough to think that would do the job when the demon who'd been shot dropped like a stone, fire crackling under its skin. "Well, fuck me," Dean breathed and watched Elkins appear at the edge of the pool, that Patterson Colt held high, its barrel smoking. One of the other demons tried to jump out of the pool, one of the kids hanging over its shoulder like a sack of flour—it went down when gunshot from the agents blew its knees out. It dropped the kid, who flopped to the concrete and lay without moving and Elkins put a shot from the Colt into that demon as well. The last demon, the demon Dean had pegged as the boss, seemed to be enjoying the hell out of the bloody chaos. It cursed and laughed, waded through the remaining crowd. It took Dean way too long to figure out the demon had a specific kid tagged—it dragged the tallest kid out of the pool with him, gripping him by his neck. The kid's arms windmilled as he tried to break the demon's grip; his mouth was open wide but no sound came out….

The demon swept his hand through the air like he was brushing flies away and most of the agents left went flying, tumbling and crashing into each other. "Amateurs. You can't handle me, you can't lock me in, or exorcise me, or any other penny ante act you pull out of your asses—" It stopped, raised its head and sniffed. Its sulfur-yellow eyes locked on Dean, piercing him. It laughed, and in that moment Dean _knew._

"Well, well, well…," it said. "As I live and somewhat breathe, darling Dean Winchester. Look at our distinguished company Samyaza. I remember you, boy, and your father. And oh yes, your baby brother, he was so much fun to play with. It took him a long time to die, Dean. A very long time." It laughed again and kicked the kid to the floor, putting its foot on his neck. "Say good bye to Dean Winchester, Samyaza, maybe you'll meet again in Hell someday." 

 

Azazel. Dean was certain down to his marrow; it was Azazel, the demon who'd targeted his family for some unimaginable reason. Rage, hatred so fierce and consuming it was almost transcendent, poured into Dean, taking his breath away with the desire, the need, to make Azazel pay for the horror he'd made of Dean's life. 

Something was tugging at him, demanding attention. Dean swiveled, ready to tear a piece out of someone. It was Elkins, pushing something at him, jabbing him with it. The Colt. "You're owed this; I'm not taking it from you—for John, finest hunter ever walked, for your mother," the man rasped into Dean's ear. 

Dean nodded, that would have to do as thanks. He grabbed the gun from Elkins and drew a bead on the demon. 

The expression Azazel turned on Dean when he saw the gun was lazy, amused. "Really, Dean? Who are you kidding—do you _get_ what it means to be me? I'm a Duke of Hell—that laughable little popgun's not gonna do a damn thing to _me."_

"Duke of Hell?" Dean aimed, fired, and Azazel shouted out in pain and shock. His leg went out from under him, blood pouring from his thigh, drenching the kid still trapped under him. Fireworks crackled under the skin of his thigh.

"Yeah, that doesn't mean shit to me," Dean said and put a blessed slug through one mustard yellow eye. 

Dean dropped the gun and stared at the resulting light show, waiting for the release—the sense of freedom he'd always anticipated would be his when he got his revenge—but there was nothing. All it meant was that the demon was dead and he was the last Winchester standing…alone.

=+= 

Dean made his way through the main part of the building, headed downwards into the basement where the holding cells were. It was depressing, the harsh light and deep shadows, the smell—stale air, floor wax and disinfectant, people with uncertain hygienic skills….

One of the cops stood when Dean flashed his badge and led him through the maze of desks. The offices were noisy, voices clashed and beat against each other, the rapid-fire click-click-click of keys and whir of copiers only pointed out how odd it was when he finally stood in front of the holding cell they'd locked the kids up in. It was quiet—so quiet it was creepy. There should have been crying, shouting, demands to be let free, for some kind of explanation, but there was only the occasional quiet gasp or sob. There was the scrape of their feet against the concrete, metallic click when they hit the bars. Dean noticed the tattoos under their eyes, on their shoulders. He couldn’t make out what they were. He smiled at one, a girl who glanced over at him, she jerked back like he'd spit at her.

The kids kept moving like…like neurotic wolves. They sat, then stood, then circled the cell, then sat again for a second or two before doing it all over again. All of this without a word. Dean wanted to grab the bars and shout at them, 'Make noise, fucking yell, beg—something!' _…be human…._

The tension in the air was so thick Dean felt it skitter over his skin. It wasn't just him that the kids were weirding out; they were affecting the whole room, judging by the way the cops gave the holding cell a wide berth. Dean scowled, but kept his feeling about that to himself. He might not like that the cops acted like the kids weren't people, but he supposed it was understandable. More than likely, those kids had been possessed briefly multiple times. A thing like that left a stain that never really faded, in the body and the mind. When the feds tested those kids, they'd find something like markers in their blood, identical to those in demon blood. In "normal" cases, it didn't actually mean much. Anyone taken even briefly showed markers for some time after possession…that and nightmares forever. It took a bit for their humanity to reclaim all the corners of their psyches, and at some unconscious level, other humans seemed to sense it. 

Still there was something more than that going on with this ragged group of kids, Dean was willing to bet on that. It was the way these kids behaved, how they reacted, or didn't react…Dean felt how wrong it was, how _off_ in a different sort of way. 

He looked back towards the office, away from the kids. Watched the cops eye the kids like they were certified monsters. Eyed the blood crusted on their bodies, flesh gummed under their nails…more. The cops heard alien grunts and sighs, saw the way the kids' hands moved secretly against each other. They'd seen the way the dogs cut these kids out of the crowd—the human-scenting dogs, who growled at the kids even as they moved them to safety, vibrating with the conflicting urge to attack and to protect. Dean saw it in the men's eyes: growing disbelief that the kids were human. Dean knew that first instinctive reaction to the unknown—fear—was slowly twisting in on itself and becoming hatred.

 

One of the kids, a boy who looked like he couldn't have gone a round with a girl scout let alone a supe, fixed him with a glare. His eyes were filled with hatred, bright with tears until he finally dropped his chin to the thin, scarred arms curled around his legs. The girl fell to her knees and wrapped her arms around the seemingly frail scrap of boy as the other boy, the dark-skinned one, crowded against his other side. 

Maybe they weren't exactly human anymore, but they weren't monsters. Not to Dean.

The tallest kid looked up at Dean's approach and growled. It was the one who'd fought the dogs—the same kid Azazel had tried to remove from the pool. Dean wondered why he wasn't isolated instead of in the cell with the others. Dean moved a little closer to the bars and Tall Kid jumped in front of the skinny kid and girl, gave Dean a deadly look as he did so. Dean held his hands up, palms out to the boy and empty. _I'm no threat._

The kid settled, a snarl turning what looked like maybe a sweet face under the grime and gore to something really unsettling—monstrous. Kid was crisscrossed with welts and bleeding scratches from the dogs' claws. He'd looked terrified when those dogs had been set on them, triply so when the Monster Squad opened fire on the real freaks. He'd looked scared shitless and still he'd jumped into the fight, trying to protect, so he thought, the other kids. Quietly, desperately. The Irish wolfhound mixes SMAC used looked a lot like small cousins of hellhounds…Dean didn't want to know how the kids knew what hellhounds looked like. He wished he didn't know; curse that fucking government witch and her fucking idea of what help entailed.

The kid pinned him with a diamond-hard glare, growled low and steady, and Dean wondered whose kid he'd been. Had he been a fat, happy little toddler, a normal kid who loved cartoons and camp-outs and Lucky Charms? Had his parents looked for him? Or had he been one of those kids sold for whatever it was his parents thought was worth sending their kids to hell for? Dean shook his head. Couldn't think like that. 

Monster Squad's guys eventually came in and herded the little group out of the cage and into an empty conference room. The chairs and desks were pushed against the walls to make room and everyone was armed to the teeth. The Monster Squaders were talking quietly; Caleb came into the room and stood behind Dean. "They don’t know what to do with this group," he said. 

The three boys and the girl jittered in the new space…still silent, but their hands skittered, in the air and against each other's bodies. They grimaced and sniffed and jerked and looked even more fucking unearthly under the softer lights of the conference room. 

"What's to figure out? Do what they always do—doctor them up, look for relatives…"

Caleb shrugged, looked uncomfortable. When he spoke, his voice was pitched to Dean's ears only. "They're thinking about…neutralizing them."

"What—they're _kids—"_

"Look at them, Dean. They're…different. I mean _really_ different. Shit, the black kid's practically a were—look at his skin, he's covered with silver burns from washing out were bites. They act like a pack—like Vic's hounds. They're fucked up, Dean. They ruined forever for normal kinda lives. "

One of the agents, glancing at the way the kids huddled up against the wall, sauntered closer. He banged hard on one of the metal desks, grinned like an asshole and then like a double asshole, mock-lunged at Tall Kid. Dean was already moving to put himself between the startled boy and the damn idiot fed when the boy dropped to the ground. Dean thought it was fear made him hit the deck, but the second he touched ground, the kid rolled forward and snapped a kick at the agent's knee when the idiot moved into range. Dean heard a pop and the asshole went down, yowling—seconds later, the kid had his teeth in the man's throat. Dean was shocked into freezing for a second. He hadn't expected anything that violent and cursed himself for a fool—they _all_ should have been expecting something like this—

The room exploded—the other kids were brought down and tied up—Dean heard multiple snap, snap, snaps of tranq guns going off. Overturning desks and chairs, warning shouts, the startled yelps of the kids—the riot of noise almost masked the sound of the boy moaning around his mouthful of flesh—Dean was repulsed before he realized the sound was pure pain. 

Dean stood in the middle of chaos and felt helpless and useless.

=+= 

The agent was just fine in the end. A little bloody, a little freaked out, but he'd survive. Hand clutched against his wound, he kicked the sedated boy in the head before he was dragged, cursing, out of the room. The kid didn't even grunt. He was out like a light. Dean narrowed his eyes at the soon to be ex-SMAC agent, visible in the doorway and still trying to make excuses for what was a fucking stupid, _rookie_ move. Dean didn't waste a moment feeling sorry for the dick who'd just crashed and burned his own career. Dean darted an angry look at Caleb and got a roll of the eyes.

"Corral that bleedin' heart of yours, 'Cheeks." Caleb said. "It's just gonna make trouble for you."

"Fuck you, asshole—I can _see_ they ain't a pack of fuzzy puppies. They're gonna cart them all off to—to—wherever. Not my problem…"

"Oh now, see, the minute you say that, I kin see the wheels turnin', " Caleb groaned. He looked at the kids, tumbled on the floor, handcuffed, drugged. "Son, they're not killin' those kids. You know Vic. What’s gonna happen is they'll end up in some damn government facility, with a bunch of brain tinkerers. Still fucked, poor bastards. Damn shitty luck."

"Fuckin' got that right," Dean grunted and felt oddly warmed that Caleb shared his view on the poor little fucks. Little fucks who probably each had a higher body count than he did.

=+= 

After they'd resettled the kids and taken the asshole fed away, and Dean had locked away his gear, he realized Henriksen still hadn't called for him so he went looking for Henriksen himself. Dean found him in a small office temporarily labeled as _SMAC_.

Henriksen was hunched over a big, age-scarred metal desk, one lone lamp casting a puddle of light on a scattered pile of papers in front of him. He was scowling down at a report clutched in his hand. He looked like he hadn't moved for quite some time. "Oh, it's you," he said when he looked up, catching Dean's eyes.

"Yeah, me. Say, Vic, what’s up with the rumors 'bout SMAC wanting to gank those kids?"

"Fuckin' hell, don't listen to stupid shit, D. Nobody's killin' no kids on my watch…" Henriksen rubbed his shirt sleeve across his face. "But…I'm not gonna lie, Winchester. It's bad. Looks like they weren't just fighting monsters against humans. They were feeding these kids blood, I mean, demon blood. It's all through them, their blood looks like they're possessed. One's a fucking skinwalker, one's almost a werewolf and from what we can get out of the pack leader—he calls himself that," Henriksen snapped when Dean tried to cut in—" the _Owner,_ Azazel, made them that way. Turned them kids into…not monsters, really. Something. I don’t know. Worse? Guess them Fallen bastards thought it'd be fun to have some brand new kinda monster to fight." 

Dean made a distressed noise, his gut flipping. "Who'd even wanna do something like that?" _Azazel,_ whispered a voice in his mind, that's who. For whatever reason, he'd poisoned those kids until they were barely human. Made them…weapons, mindless slaves. Dean had seen some godawful stuff in his years but this was so…so fucked up in its deliberate and systematic cruelty. So sadistic and just plain—

Henriksen tossed a handful of glossy photos onto the desk. "They fed those kids through the meat grinder. Until what was left—who was left—was tempered like steel. They made perfect killing machines."

Dean growled. He'd never seen demons cooperate with each other in this way before. Generally they seemed intent on destroying themselves and others. They couldn't begin to gang up without ripping each other to shreds. So why this time? How had Azazel managed to do that? "Did any 'suits survive?"

Henriksen grunted, shook his head. "Exorcised clean as we could. Saved some, already salted and burned those we couldn't. We burned a lot. Managed to keep a demon to interrogate." Henriksen looked an uncomfortable combination of sad and angry. Dean knew how he felt about interrogating demons but…it was what it was. "So far, no answers. No track, no trace in computers, papers, just a bunch of dead monsters and some monstrous kids. I'm waiting for the SMAC interrogators to arrive." He said it in the same tone some would use in expectation of a rain of cockroaches.

Dean nodded. Henriksen was a hard guy, a tough guy. He was a badass from way back. But torture was something he couldn't stomach, bad guys, monsters or not. Sure, he'd tune 'em up a bit, anybody would, but professional torture turned both their stomachs. It was hard to see SMAC's experts as anything approaching regular guys. Henriksen glanced up at Dean and his eyes were so deep, so dark…it was clear the man had reached the end of whatever reserves he had. He was about a hot minute from face-planting, and all the caffeine in the world wasn't gonna help. Judging from the forest of cups on Henriksen's desk, he'd given it his best try. Henriksen leaned back in his chair, scrubbed at his face, forgetting he was holding a report in his hand, and cursed as he crushed the paper against his tired eyes.

"Ow, damnit, fuck…anyway, the kids're tattooed. Their names…and something, info of some kind. Under their eyes. On their shoulders. Their backs. They won't speak to us. All of them use some sort of sign language that must have been something they taught each other, because no one at the station understands it. We're sending out for—" Henriksen stopped, inhaled deep and let it out slow. "Help. Fuck, we need so much damn help... "

Dean nodded and reached across the desk. He grabbed Henriksen's hand and pulled so that he was nearly spread across the top of the metal desk, crushing and shedding files as Dean pulled him close.

"On the clock, dude, what the hell—"

"Shut up, asshole."

The kiss was a little sour, flavored with coffee and exhaustion, but Henriksen's lips were soft and gave so quick to Dean's slight pressure, he knew Henriksen needed out, some down time, some forgetfulness. It stayed slow, though, press and ease. They moved, lips shifting and searching for that perfect fit, warm roll of tongue against tongue, a little teeth, little scrape against plush, warm, sensitive inner skin—and then Henriksen pulled back with a groan. "God damn, Winchester. No time for this."

"You feel a little more awake now, don’t you?"

Henriksen glared at him—and then laughed. It was quieter than normal, and that smart-ass grin didn't quite surface all the way, but it was better, Henriksen looked better. "Go home and get some sleep while you can, Dean. Tomorrow's gonna be a whole 'nother day," Henriksen said, and Dean was pretty sure he meant a whole new shitstorm of a day.

=+= 

Dean heard a high-pitched scream rolling through the corridors as he made his way back to the office Henriksen had taken over. Last night, all the shit going on had over-whelmed him, knocked him into the dark spaces in his dreams the minute he hit the bed. Today, he wanted answers…and he wanted to personally check on those kids.

Dean bypassed Henriksen's temporary office when he was nowhere to be found and ended up outside the slightly open door to what was labeled _Interrogation Room 1._ It didn't take the harsh scream clawing at the air to let Dean know just what was going on in that room right at the moment, something SMAC considered a necessary evil. He opened it wider and grimaced. He was right—the room held one demon chained to a metal chair and two men. Gordon Walker and another SMAC agent Dean didn’t know. 

Gordon was elbow deep in blood and, apparently, that's what it took to get him in a good mood. "Winchester, you're just in time. We’re about to see if we can get some answers. Feel free to sit in, if you want. Agent Henriksen declined," Gordon said, and it was plain what he thought of that. 

His partner said, "Henriksen's got delicate sensibilities." And Gordon smiled at that, a beautiful, cheerful smile that lit up his face. Gordon smiling never failed to startle Dean…it was a sweet smile, the look of a mischievous little boy, so at odds with who he knew Gordon to be, completely out of place in the little slice of hell the interrogation room had become. 

The chair the demon was tied to sat on a Solomon's seal. Another seal was drawn on the ceiling above the bound demon. The room smelled of burning flesh and fresh blood. There was a lock-in sigil on the thing's chest, not healed but not new—this was the demon he'd seen being shoved into a warded van last night. It was going nowhere. It couldn't be exorcised, but it couldn't flee either. The only way out was Elkin's Colt—or something Dean had thought was a damn fable. He bit down on a gasp at the sight of a silver blade, cradled in shock foam, on the table. It looked like a short, slim, sword lacking a crossguard.

There'd been claims that a magic demon killing sword had turned up in SMAC's armament a few years ago, but like most he'd called it bullshit. There'd been no word on where they came from or how the FBI came up with them, they just…magically came to exist. The claim was that they killed a lower-level demon completely—just like the magic-enhanced Colt had destroyed Azazel completely. It was…overwhelming. For so long, they'd been essentially weaponless and now…Dean wondered what the new weapons meant for Hunters. For people.

He left the office, not any more eager to see Gordon work than Henriksen was. He could hear Gordon's soft chuckling behind him. He was going to find Henriksen and grill him about that weapon and then, he was going to see if he and Henriksen could see eye to eye about different things….

Dean caught up with Henriksen as he was shrugging on his coat, about to leave for the evening. The only light in the tiny office came from a desk lamp that had seen better days—it threw shadows over Henriksen's face. Dean could only clearly see the frown that pulled the corners of Henriksen's mouth down. They stood staring at each other for a minute and then, Henriksen sighed heavily and stepped forward, the lamp lighting his whole face. Dean could see Henriksen looked tired, uncertain and unhappy. He ran a hand over his mouth and peered at Dean. Finally he gave Dean a lopsided smile. "I'm out," he said. "They got this and I don’t need to be here right now. I'm gonna eat, and then crash the fuck out. You comin'?"

Dean shrugged himself. "Sure." He reached over the desk and snapped the lamp off. He trailed silently behind Henriksen, got in the passenger side of the SUV he drove and got out with him at his hotel. "Hunh. Nice. Nicer than anyplace I've ever stayed."

"Yeah, that ain't sayin' much, Winchester. Grab a bag, make yourself useful."

"Fuck you," Dean muttered and grabbed Henriksen's briefcase and a backpack from the backseat. He rode the elevator up with him, respecting Henriksen's apparent need for silence. When they came to the proper floor, Henriksen stalked off, leaving Dean to trot after him. "What am I, your servant?"

Henriksen finally cracked a smile as he unlocked the door. "Put that stuff in the closet."

"What the fuck dude, you really are a bossy bitch—unh!"

Henriksen knocked Dean up against the wall, leaned until his hips were pressed into him, staring up at him from an inch away. "We're gonna eat and then we're gonna fuck and then…we'll see. Got it?"

Dean nodded. "Sure. You only had to say…"

Henriksen rolled away from Dean, laughing. "Why've you always gotta be such an asshole, D?"

"As I've heard, that's one of the good things about me." Dean spread himself across the bed, and grinned at Henriksen. "So. Spill."

Henriksen held up his hand, tossed Dean a plastic menu card from the room's desk. "Choose a damn place to get some grub from," he said. "Your government's treat."

"My favorite kind," Dean grinned. 

Not much later, they had dinner spread over the room's table. Between them sat a couple of cardboard boats of takeout ribs, alongside cornbread and macaroni and cheese steaming gently in their containers. Their elbows were planted in a nest of napkins and they were chasing bites with gulps of the local beer. Dean was watching Henriksen suck sauce off his fingers and play it up just a bit. "Idiot," Dean snorted. Still, it was damn good sauce. There was an argument to be made for wet ribs. 

They were clean down to the bone, nothing left but empty cartons and Dean was flicking cornbread crumbs off his fingers when Henriksen crumbled his napkin, laid it on the table and said, "Well."

"Well?"

"SMAC sent the DNA samples off to the lab—super rush-rush. We should know by tomorrow if any of those kids got family looking for them."

"That fast? Well, aren't you a Boss?" Dean leaned back, crossed his feet at the ankles. Smirked when Henriksen told him to shut the fuck up. "Whatever. What's in line for those kids if no family turns up for 'em, dude?"

"Nothing good, I won't lie," Henriksen said. "There's a place in DC that they'll more'n likely end up at. It won’t be bad as it could be for them, but I can't pretend it'll be anything like home."

Dean sighed. "Well, gotta be better than what they had."

"Yeah," Henriksen said but Henriksen didn't sound like he was much convinced from the tone of it, and neither was Dean. Still, nothing he could do. He wasn't equipped to drag a bunch of fucked up kids around with him, wasn't prepared to begin to know how to help. Bobby would shoot his eyes out if he rolled up to Singer Salvage with a bunch of orphan killer pups…

"You gonna keep an eye on them, Vic?" 

"Are you crazy? How'm I gonna find time to watch out for a bunch of-of—I got shit to do, Winchester, a division to run."

Which meant, of course, that Henriksen would break his back to make sure those kids got the best they could expect. Dean nodded and relaxed a bit. All right. He stood, swept the table clean and turned the TV up, flicked through channels until he found a game, any game. He smiled at Henriksen. "So…still tired?"

=+= 

Dean was spread across the bed, Henriksen laying so only their legs touched, head on his crossed arms. He loved fucking, and he loved just lying there after, kind of sleepy and maybe enjoying the heat of another body tucked against his, warm and pliant…it wasn't cuddling, not really, it was…

"Hey, D…? What's it like being the son of a legend?"

…it was nice until right this moment, Dean thought and growled, "Where the hell did that come from? Did I fuck your brains out?"

Henriksen slapped Dean's stomach, ignored Dean's yelp of outrage. "I was just thinking, if it hadn't been for your dad—and your other, I mean, Singer—anyway, if those two hadn't been clipped in that demon-possessed town that night, and if the FBI hadn't come running as soon as their arrest came up on the wire—"

"God damn, if you were thinking about that, than I sure wasn't doing my job." He swatted the pillow Henriksen aimed at his head aside with a grin but truth to tell, Henriksen's question did kind of get under his skin. What was it like? It wasn't like anything—it just was. _Legends._ Right. It wasn't like he hadn't heard the story a hundred times. How the feebs and those two then-young hunters had stood off a demon invasion, how a big time demon player got wiped off the map. How eyes were opened wide and the whole world changed.

"The best thing ever happened was the FBI setting up a monster killing unit and pulling you cowboys in on it, admit it."

"Yeah, maybe so, but you should hear Bobby, he's got serious thoughts on the subject." Dean did chuckle thinking of his adopted father, red-faced and ranting about the damn government sponsored panty-waist hunters stinking up the planet these days, present company excepted because at least Dean knew what he was doing and had a head on his shoulders. Dean snorted softly. Yeah, Bobby Singer, first director and liaison for the newly cobbled together Hunters Guild and the then-infant SMAC. Dean just wished all this had worked out to his dad's benefit. John died not long after the FBI had approached him and Bobby about coordinating Hunters and the FBI's new monster unit. He'd taken the initial steps with Bobby, but died chasing after another clue he swore led to what killed Sammy, the little brother who'd died like their mom, in a fire John swore up and down some Boss Demon set…for some unaccountable reason. 

Dean sighed. All that running, all that looking…what a waste. Dean knew, and he knew John had known it as well—Dean was the reason they'd lost Sam. Dean was the one who'd left him to die.

Henriksen yanked the blankets down the bed, stripping them off Dean and knocking him out of the worsening spiral of his thoughts; he was grinning in that way that meant business. "Giddyup, cowboy," he said, so Dean did what he did best—shut out anything that wasn't in the here and now. Besides, he needed to wipe the damn smirk straight off Henriksen's face, cocky bastard. 

"God, you ever fuck anyone but me, because smooth is not your middle name."

"Nah, my middle name is," and Henriksen threw his head back, moaned, "Oh god oh Jesus, more, more." Dean grabbed the pillow Henriksen had tossed at him and smacked him in the face with it. "Ask me why I put up with this abuse," Henriksen muttered and rolled onto Dean. 

"I'll show you," Dean said, and opened his mouth over Henriksen's soft dick, held it and enjoyed the feeling of it growing, the warm weight sliding over his tongue and nudging the back of his throat, the smell, the taste of Henriksen and the promise of sex making him hard. This was good; this was what he waited for—the aftermath of a good hunt, someone who liked him, who wanted him, in bed with him. A guy who had history with him. Henriksen, Caleb…they knew him, kept him grounded and let him know he was alive, like Henriksen shoving his dick into Dean's throat with a deep, rumbling moan. Dean scrubbed his tongue over the head of Henriksen's dick, teased his tongue into the slit, where it was warmer and smoother and made Henriksen yelp and buck up. Dean throat hurt, but in a good way. He ground down against the mattress, too turned on sucking Henriksen to touch himself. Henriksen would take care of that later—he was damn considerate that way. 

"Oh yeah," Henriksen breathed, "that's why I do…."

=+= 

When he got back to the motel the next morning, Caleb was waiting for him, packed bags at the door.

"What the fuck, Caleb. I thought we were headed back to South Dakota together, man."

"Dude, 'Cheeks—I'm gonna run down to Florida with Shane Mackey, y'know? You don’t like Florida and I know you miss yer pop, and…hey. Vic's here. You guys wanna catch up, right? I mean, do some more catching up."

Dean narrowed a look at Caleb, and Caleb lowered his eyes. "You're running, you son of a bitch. Something happened and you're running from it. What? They're gonna kill those kids? Is that it?"

"No! No, that's not it."

Dean cocked his head at Caleb, considered before drawling, "You jealous? You're not jealous…?"

 _"Hell,_ no." Caleb twisted a smile at Dean. "Well. Maybe. A little. Know I ain't get much right, but..." Caleb shrugged. "Don't pay me no mind. We'll meet up before Christmas, right? Like usual?" 

Dean scrubbed a hand across his neck. "'Course. Yeah…listen, Caleb…"

"Dean, shut up. You're good, I'm good—we're _good._ We'll always be good, y'hear?"

"Yeah. Okay. Hey, if you need help, you get in touch, you hear? Don’t take off after something with no backup."

"And by no backup you mean without you, Dean Winchester, the unstoppable, the invincible."

Dean laughed, and the tension fled, back on their usual easy footing again. They hugged, and Dean walked Caleb out to Shane's truck. Shane tipped his cap to Dean, and Caleb swung his bag in the back, winked at Dean and Dean watched the truck pull away. 

Well, fuck. He might as well pack up too, he thought. He was just loading his bag into the car when he got a call. "Come on down to the cop house," Henriksen said. "We gotta talk."

=+= 

Dean strolled into Henriksen's office. Carl and Henriksen were both there, along with someone Dean didn't know. He cocked an eyebrow at Henriksen, who rose from his seat, nothing but business in his expression, but something off in his eyes.

"Dean, this is Agent Wilton. He's got some information for you, something pertaining to those kids."

Wilton stood and shook Dean's hand. "Mr. Winchester. It's a pleasure to meet you."

Dean nodded. "So what's so important you're back at work—and forcing me back in?" He meant it half-joking but that look in Henriksen's eyes unsettled him; he had the feeling whatever it was, was huge in a bad way.

"Dean…" Henriksen began, and then kind of sagged. He gestured for Wilton to hand Dean the files he held. 

"That's the DNA report on the children out there," Wilton said. "We found only one match. The report proves that one of them is related…to you, Hunter Winchester."

"What? What the hell are you going on about, there's no way—" 

Henriksen broke in. "Sit down, Dean."

Dean dropped into a chair. "There's no fucking way, Henriksen. There is no other family. Dad was an only child and his mom and dad died long before me or Sam were born…same thing on my mom's side. There's no one. No other siblings. Just." He swallowed and his eyes burned. "No one."

Wilton swallowed, darted a glance at Henriksen, who sat stone faced and waiting. "There's no mistake. He matches the DNA on record for John Winchester, and Dean—"

"I'm telling you, it's impossible," Dean shouted, but Henriksen grabbed him before he could convince Wilton with his fists. 

"It's the truth, Dean. He matches John and you. He's your brother. There's no doubt about it. Full sibling, Dean. And we need to get him out of the facility here. He killed one of those other kids last night, the 'walker. Broke his neck. We're not sure why but—the attendants said he cried, and the girl's not talking. I'm not saying he's dangerous, I don’t think he is, regardless of what happened. And…the kid he killed was a monster, you know how that goes. But it's better for him to be under the radar for a while."

"Which one?" Dean snarled, knowing it was a ridiculous question, none of them, none of those kids could be Sam, none of them looked familiar—it just couldn't be. "Which one's supposed to be my—my brother?"

Wilton shoved a picture across the desktop. "That one." It was the tall kid, the long, lanky one who'd growled like a wolf and killed one of the dogs, and now apparently killed one of the kids Dean thought he was fighting to protect. This guy was supposed to be his brother? The picture was grainy and the focus was bad, but….

Henriksen was too fucking sympathetic and it was getting on Dean's nerves. His stomach tightened and roiled unpleasantly and he was afraid he might have to grab the wastebasket that sat under Henriksen's desk. "They called this one Samyaza," Henriksen said, all soft tone and welling eyes and—

"Samyaza?" Dean blinked; the room did a little sideways kind of shimmy. "Samya—Sam—?"


	2. Sam

**1988**

_A hand reached in the box and yanked the boy out, scraping knees over rough, unfinished wood._  
"Well, what the fuck we got here?" The voice was loud, bellowing what was not really a question, and the boy knew that and kept his mouth shut. He'd learned to be quiet as fuck the last few days. He shivered as the big hand around his neck tightened. 

"You're dirty and you stink. Smell like piss and fireplaces. Where did they snatch you up from?" The hand twisted the boy's face from side to side. The cold blue eyes searched out everything, from the way the boy looked to the way he stood, the way he tried to hide in plain sight. The man holding him sniffed again and made a face. "You shit in the box, you little hairless ape."

The boy dropped his head as best he could around the tight grip. Of course he shit in the box—they hadn't let him out of it in days. He'd peed in the box, yeah, he'd shit in it. And if his dad was here, he'd kill this scum bag without a thought. The boy peered at the man and whispered, "Christo."

The man surprised him by laughing, long and loud. "Oh fuck me, that's too goddamn funny—hunters, man. Walk the fucking earth like they own it. Well, looks like getting the feds behind you bastards didn't do much for _you,_ hunh, kid?" The man grinned wider and squeezed until the boy's pulse beat in his eyes, his mouth. Black edged in from the corners of the room, rushing in to blind him. "I'm human, you little ape. Human, human, human. I just really like my job."

He dropped the boy, who immediately rolled into a ball, trying to save himself from the boots he figured were coming next. 

"Tell you what, little shit-ape. This here is going to be your new home. No, let me make myself clear. Your new home will be wherever I am. And who am I, you're asking…or maybe not, you look kinda stupid. Who I am is your Uncle Luke. The only family you got now."

The boy jerked and unrolled, screaming, "You're not my family—my dad's going to find you and kill you, and my brother too! Just wait, my dad's gonna come looking for me and—" The crack as the man's fist hit his cheekbone deafened him; the pain made everything go sparkly and bright, and tears shot out of his eyes. 

"Well, see, here's the thing. That fire—you remember that fire, don't you?"

The boy was already shaking his head, no, no, no—

"Killed everybody, kid. Your dad, your brother….all dead. We capped them and left them inside the house to burn—"

"No! You're lying—"

"Oh yeah. Dead as doornails. Crispy critters. Be Daddy briquettes now, Brother toast. And you, you're nobody. You're shit, you're muh little ass ape now. As far as the world's concerned, Sam Winchester is _dead,_ just like the rest of the Winchesters."

Shivers ran through the boy's body, sweat broke out between his shoulder blades and trickled, cold and clammy, down his spine. He tried to hold on to himself but his arms wouldn't work. His knees gave out and he dropped to the cold, damp concrete floor. He kept falling, straight down into the grey, silent cloud stuffing his head. At first, he could barely feel the fists working him over but eventually the pain brought him back, until he cried out, begged with all his heart for the man to please, please stop. When the man shoved him back in the box, nearly face down in his own shit, it felt like a reprieve. 

He curled into a ball and cried and cried. He hurt, but just his body, not his spirit. He just had to wait. Dean wasn't dead. Dad wasn't dead. They'd find him because that's what family did, they looked out for each other, that's what Dean always said. They kept each other safe….

=+= 

**April 1988**  


_"Go on boys, bring the bags in. I'm gonna pull the car around the back."_  
Dean and Sam took hesitant steps up to the tiny porch, a seeming afterthought pasted on the front of a small, sad, cottage. The porch roof was sway-backed, looked as if a single harsh breath would knock it loose, and Dean eyed it like he'd eye a supernatural thing crawling out of the woodwork. The door yawed a bit; the cheery sky blue color the cottage must have been once was now a dreary slate. On each side of the street, similar houses slumped. The whole neighborhood looked tired and defeated. Dean bit his lip. It was all so different now. He still remembered a white house and a yard full of pretty flowers, how sunlight filled all the rooms…but that was a long time ago, and he was certain only he remembered that a house could be like that. He tightened his grip on his little brother's hand.

Sam of course picked up on Dean's reluctance and came to a stop. He pulled, trying to get Dean to let go of his hand. When Sam glanced over his shoulder and saw John's look of exasperation, he pulled harder and dug his little heels into the ground. "I don't wanna go in there." His high, little boy voice carried clearly in the chilly autumn air.

"Sam…" John took a deep breath, held it for a few counts. "Sam, I wouldn't let you or Dean go in if it wasn't safe." 

Dean turned to look at John, and John felt a flicker of dismay when his trusted little soldier gave him a look full of…not exactly disbelief but not exactly trust. John took a step back and looked—really looked—at the place he was asking his children to live in for the next few weeks. It was…pretty awful. The guy who'd rented it to him had told him it was sound, just not…pretty. 

He sure hadn't been kidding. 

Another sigh slipped out as John dropped the bags on the ground next to the car. He walked up to the porch, rubbing his knuckles over sleep-crimped hair as he passed the boys. "Wait here," he said.

He stomped into the narrow room meant to be a living room. When he patted the back of the old plaid sofa hunkered down in the middle of the room, a little puff of dust greeted him. The floorboards bounced—he held his breath and stomped harder, but besides also giving up their little wisps of dust, they held. John strode into the kitchen, still stomping. He was sure he could hear Sam at the front door giggling, and felt a little better. 

He stomped and huffed, and played it up a bit for his boys. The end result was good. Nothing gave. Thank God. The cabinets had doors and looked fairly clean. The drawers were lined with newspaper, also clean. The oven worked, the door screeched like it was being tortured but it opened, and whooshed to life when he turned the knobs. Also good. 

He felt little eyes on his back and turned. His sons were following him, all huge eyes and sharp cheekbones. Dean's wrists hung out from the bottom of his coat sleeves. Sam's fingers were drowned in the bottom of his. They looked expectant now; Dean looked at John like he had the answers to everything and John preened a bit, worried a bit, at the weight of faith once again in his son's eyes. John waved them in, and they ran to his side and followed him, inspecting every nook and cranny alongside him.

Sam pulled the fridge door open and the fridge was cold inside and smelled of lemons. John reached over his head and opened the freezer—inside were a couple of ice trays, with a few cubes in each. John nodded, like a doctor examining a patient and finding him well. The boys nodded too. He stepped to the sink, opened the faucets, cold first and then hot. Steam rose quickly in the chilly air. Again, a nod. John cut his eyes to the boys and they nodded too. 

They went as a group through each room, stomping and slamming doors, turning on lights, running water in the bathroom….

They were back in the front room. John raised his eyebrows. "Boys?"

The boys were satisfied— _Dean_ was satisfied. "Okay," he said, serious tone, serious expression, like they'd just discussed some important issue and come to an agreement, like grown men. "We'll get our bags. Ready, Sammy?"

John watched Sam, who watched Dean, the expression on his youngest son's face said Dean hung the moon and lit the sun. John was a grown man and loved his boys. But he wished that once, just once, Sam would lay the same kind of look on him that he laid on Dean. He shook his head. There was a reason why Sam looked to Dean like that, and the reason was John Winchester. How could John blame Sam when every moment of his young life, he had passed him off to Dean? He sighed. _Spilt milk,_ he thought and herded the boys back out to the car. 

John and his boys dragged their bags into the house, split them between the rooms that would be theirs. They put away the few groceries they had, enough to last them for a day or two. Dean made the beds and rustled up towels while John made dinner and found where the plates and glasses and silverware were. 

They ate hamburger and mac'n'cheese. Sam sat at the left side of the table and swung his feet back and forth, wolfing down food and drinking big gulps of milk. They hadn't stopped until they reached this little town, John having been hell-bent to get out of Wisconsin. Dean asked no questions; he ate his dinner, slightly slower than Sam. Sam met his eyes every few seconds and smiled, and Dean smiled back. His smile was small, sweet and a little sad. 

John wished he wasn't leaving come the weekend. He wished that he could put the boys in school, find a job, settle down just a bit. Be normal. He sighed. The best that he could do right now was try and make it back before Sam's birthday. He took a bite of the mac and cheese and burger mess, and tried to figure out how much longer the money in the boys' college fund would last. 

"You boys clean up and get ready for bed. In the morning, I'll make pancakes."

Sammy raised his arms and crowed his pleasure. Pancakes were his favorite thing to eat, and they didn't always get a chance to have them. Most of the time, they had oatmeal or cereal. He thought this was just one more good thing about the ugly but good little house. Dean eyed his dad, and wondered just how long he was going to leave them alone this time. Pancakes usually meant a long time, longer than Dean liked, anyway. He turned to watch Sam and Sam's pretty smile. He was glad that Sam was still too young to put two and two together. He turned back to his dad, and sighed like he'd heard his dad sigh, and for the same reason. It wasn't long before Sam would catch on, and then what? What would his dad do then?

"I count on you, Dean," his dad whispered, and Dean nodded, feeling his chest go tight. It felt knotted up until Sam threw his arms around him and yelled, "Tell me a bedtime story, Dean?"

He wrapped his arms around Sam and pulled him to the farthest room in the house, their bedroom. "Yeah, 'course." He heard the creak, crack of the heat coming on and thought that the ugly little house maybe wasn't so bad after all. 

Besides, they'd only be there a couple of weeks. Didn't matter how ugly or not it was, they'd be leaving soon enough.

 

John stayed three more days, making sure the boys were settled in, and left after breakfast on Saturday, eating the guilt that bloomed in him at the sight of his boys waving good-bye from the porch. Bundled up in the Salvation Army pajamas, Goodwill slippers on their feet. Nine year old Dean, looking like a tiny old man, his arm around Sammy, four years old, _five_ in few days, and still thinking the world was full of magical good things, certain of it because Dean made it so. John drove with one eye on the road ahead and one eye behind…worry joined fear until he killed them both. If the hunt went well, he and Bill could get shitfaced drunk, and for a few hours at least, he'd feel like a normal person. Or be unconscious, good enough.

=+= 

Dad left in the morning, after breakfast and packing and reading that weird book he carried with him all the time. Dean helped him pack and kept Sam quiet so Dad could concentrate on whatever it was he was reading and writing about.

The rest of the day went fairly quietly. Sammy was antsy from having to sit still and be quiet for what was a long time, for a kid his age, so Dean ran him ragged with games of Red Light Green Light, and Mother May I and Airplane. When it got too cold to stay outside, they came in and sat close to the heat register while he helped Sammy work on his ABCs. Sam insisted he wanted to learn to read like Dean did when he went to school, so Dean promised Sam they'd have their very own classes and Sam could learn whatever Dean did. Dean thought it was cute, when it wasn't annoying, and Sam was pretty good at it—he was starting to get that the letters meant something, that putting them together made real words. Maybe he'd look for some workbooks at the Salvation Army store when Dad came back…Sammy's birthday was coming and he'd probably like something like that, the little geek....

They wrapped up the ABCs and Dean made soup and bologna and cheese sandwiches, because Sammy liked bologna. At least for the moment, he did.

Now, it was after dinner, and bath time and story time, and Sam was a snoring little bundle in the middle of the bed. Dean's arms hurt from airplaning, and his feet hurt from Sam crashing into him and stomping all over his toes. The fingers on his right hand hurt from burning them on the soup pot. He sat on the couch, stuck stinging fingers in his mouth and flicked through the few channels the TV got. He found an ancient cowboy movie and settled in to watch. 

A funny crackling sound woke him, a smell of smoke. He shot upright; terrified he'd left the soup pot on a hot burner. But the heat was coming down the short hallway, and the light was coming from there too. There was a cracking, tearing sound that he recognized was breaking wood, and he leaped up and ran towards the hall, to Sam in the back bedroom. The flames shoved him back, the heat seared him, made his eyes run and his cheeks burn. He was coughing and coughing, panicking before his training kicked in. He ran out of the house and right into the memory of the last time there was a fire. Sam's warm, spare little weight in his arms. The sound of his dad screaming in his ears. The trucks and people and the light and the smell of burning and the sound of wood tearing, collapsing into the fire….

He was outside, without Sam, no Sam, _where was Sam,_ he was supposed to be holding Sam but he ran out and….

He'd left Sam in the fire, Sam was in the house. Dean screamed and ran back towards the porch, the crappy little porch still hanging onto the ugly, horrible, burning, little house. People shouted and held him back, they held his arms and held him down and Sammy burned up all by himself in the house. And then Dean was all alone and his dad was gone and didn’t know that Dean had killed Sammy by running away like a coward. 

When John met Bobby Singer at the hospital the next morning, Dean wasn't speaking. John dropped to his knees and dug his fingers so deep into the skin of his scalp he broke the skin. Blood ran down his temples as Bobby reminded him he needed to be strong for Dean and that he was there for the both of them…that this was a time to let bygones be bygones. "Go get your boy and come on back with me. You're gonna need the help."

When John looked at Dean, a tiny boy with too much on his shoulders and the absolute knowledge of death in his little boy eyes, John looked away. He turned away so Dean couldn't see the guilt and sorrow and the sheer weight of self-loathing in his own eyes. 

Dean took it to mean his dad was disgusted by the sight of him. 

He never forgot, and never forgave himself, and never believed that his dad trusted him ever again.

=+= 

_Sam came to forget that a man—men—with black eyes knocked his bedroom window out of the wall, and sent a flood made of fire through his bedroom door and out to the hall. He came to forget that he'd screamed for Dean to come. He forgot that his dad hadn't been there, and forgot being forcibly shoved into a blanket and swung over another man's shoulder, and how he'd thrown up into the blanket because the man ran and bounced his bony shoulder against Sam's stomach. How the blanket was wrapped around his head and he couldn't get away from the throw up._

_What he remembered was a fire and that his brother and dad died in it. Uncle Luke said once that they'd died like idiots, trying to save him. Maybe. He found that hard to believe—he couldn't see a reason why they would have died for him. If they died, it was probably because they couldn't get out of the house. The way Uncle Luke treated him, Sam knew he wasn't worth much except for fighting._

_Sometimes Sam thought that maybe *he'd* set the fire that killed his family himself. Sam *had* killed a lot of people…._

_Uncle Luke thought he was stupid. But he wasn't. He was smart enough to walk out of the ring every time. That counted. And he was smart enough to know that he was worthless outside of the ring. And smart enough to know that his dad and brother would have gotten rid of him anyway, eventually, because he held them back, being so useless. The time came that all Sam remembered was that he had no one besides Uncle Luke and The Owner. The things he knew besides fighting and trying not to die weren't much. He knew his name, Sam; short for Samyaza, he knew his ABC's and when it was dark, and he hurt and he couldn't sleep from hurting, he said them over and over until he could. "My name is Sam and I know my ABCs…A…B…C…D…E…A…N, my name is Sam and…."_

**May 1988**

_There was a metal pan of food on the floor of the box when Sam woke up, that and a big metal cup full of water._  
Sam squirmed hard, almost gasping in pain. He wanted to eat and to drink, but he had to pee so bad, and it stank of piss and shit in the box but he could smell the food too and, and….

Sam squirmed back as far into the corner as he could, opened his shorts and peed in the corner. His eyes watered and his nose burned, but he couldn't, couldn't…he shuffled forward again, and dipped his fingers into the soft food. It looked like mushy brown peas and he hated peas and mushy stuff, but his stomach was almost flat with hunger pains. He sucked the glop off his fingers. It tasted awful, but the minute it hit his tongue, a painful flare shot along his jaws and he drooled, like the food was the best ever. He wolfed it down, and drank and drank, refused to think of having to pee again later, or worse…

By the time the pan was polished clean and the cup was dry, the front of the box came off. A man reached in and dragged him out, his face creased in disgust. "Fuck, you little animal, you stink."

He pulled Sam out, and threw him across a concrete box of a room. He knocked Sam back down when he tried to stand, and then, began methodically beating him. He beat Sam until he threw up all the food and the water he'd drunk. Beat Sam until he passed out, and then left him on the floor. 

When Sam woke, his clothes were gone and he was draped in a too big t-shirt that hung off him like an ugly sack. He was terrified by that, so scared that someone had taken his _clothes_ and he hadn't even _known,_ that at first he didn't notice the wooden box was gone. The box was gone but he was still in the tiny concrete room. The floor was wet, water sluggishly trickling down a drain set in the middle of the floor. It was clean, and so was he. And he was hungry, so hungry. 

Food came again, a different man brought it. He watched while Sam stuffed himself with it, and then beat him until Sam threw up again. Beat him harder when he screamed. He was awake this time when the man hosed the room, and him, down with icy water. 

It went on and on. Sam hurt all over, all the time. He was hungry all the time, so hungry he couldn't think. He'd almost forgotten he was waiting for Dean to save him. He'd lost track of everything except the gnawing, clawing pain in his middle. 

Once, after he'd thrown up and before the man came with the hose, he'd tried to eat whatever was most solid in the puke on the floor. He tried, he really tried, but he couldn't keep it down. 

Sam spent what felt like days and days this way—eat, get beaten, lose it, until he stopped eating at all and no amount of beating would get him to. One morning, or night, whenever it was, he opened his eyes, and try as hard as he might, he couldn't move. Bits of him jerked and twitched and trembled all over, but he couldn't move. The door opened and he smelled food. He blinked; it was all he could do. 

 

The man crouched down and held a cup out. Hissed when Sam couldn't reach out. He lifted Sam's head and held the cup to his lips. It was that man, that Uncle Luke. "Drink, but go slow. You throw this up and you don't get more." The cup held some kind of coke, sweet and bubbly, it made his jaws lock, so he sucked the liquid through his teeth. There was another taste, a weird taste. Like…pennies. Coke and pennies. He didn't like it. It coated the inside of his mouth, his tongue. His stomach wanted to push it back out, but Sam forced it down. There was a look in the man's eyes that told him if he vomited, the beating wouldn't stop with Sam just passing out

When the cup was empty, Uncle Luke eased Sam's head back to the ground. Sam waited for the boot, the fist, but it didn’t come. He opened his eyes and found himself looking into Uncle Luke's face, only inches away. He smiled at Sam, brushing wiry, brown-blonde, hair back from a broad forehead and out of eyes so blue they looked didn't look real. His cocoa colored skin made his teeth look even whiter. "Remember this, little ass-ape. Everything you need comes from me. Me, and nobody else." 

Uncle Luke smacked his cheek lightly and walked out, leaving Sam to lay blinking on the gritty concrete floor. 

He only sat up when his stomach began to twist and roil, but he held the coke down. After a few minutes, he felt warm all over, too warm. Sweat matted his hair to his face; the grimy t-shirt he wore went wet with it. Sam shook and moaned and bit down on his lip to keep quiet, bit until the tender skin popped and blood ran over his chin. He'd been beaten too many times for speaking above a whisper, too many times—he wasn't about to lose control now. Eventually, Sam fell into a restless sleep. When he woke again, he felt better than he'd had in a long, long time. He felt well enough to cry. 

Uncle came to ask him how he felt, and Sam shook his head, his eyes locked on Uncle's chin. "You don’t feel different? No strange dreams, nothing?" He stared at Sam and Sam felt…how Uncle was a stack of jagged thoughts, stabbing Sam in his head. There was slick, gluey blackness threaded all through the jagged edges in Uncle Luke's head. He knew what Uncle wanted, but Sam wasn't going to give him anything he didn't have to. "Fuck. A null, hunh? Well, guess your strengths lay elsewhere, 'cause Yellow Eyes sure is excited about you, kid." He shook his head and walked away, leaving Sam grateful to be alone in his head.

Every time after that, when Uncle asked, he shook his head, looked puzzled, and smiled inside. After a while, Uncle Luke stopped asking.

Things changed after that, not really for the better but not worse. He woke up one day in a bigger room, this one with a toilet and a blanket folded over a few times. Twice a day, Uncle Luke brought him food. He got clothes, real clothes, a clean pair of shorts and a t-shirt, every other day. Every few days, he had a shower in a little closet made of plastic. He didn't know how long he'd been there, how many days it'd been since the fire. No one came for him and after a while, he began to think that maybe Uncle Luke had been telling the truth. Maybe Dean and his dad really had died. Sam didn't want to think like that, he prayed every day that they'd bust in the door and kill that Uncle Luke bastard, but….

He'd lost all track of time. He didn't know how many days he'd been trapped for, or maybe it was weeks, maybe even months. Whenever he got food Uncle Luke told him he was lucky to have someone to feed him and clothe him, since his dad was dead and no one was ever going to come for him. He said that every time. Every day, Sam tried not to hear that, just let his hair hide his face and closed his eyes as he ate the crap and drink the weird stuff Uncle Luke gave him. And every time, Uncle Luke just grabbed a handful of hair, yanked his head back and screamed in his face, "Pay attention!"

That happened until the day Uncle Luke brought clippers and all of Sam's hair ended up on the cell floor. He ran his hands over his prickly scalp, wanting to cry but not daring to. Not that he missed his hair, or wanted to keep it that badly. It just felt like he'd lost something more important than hair—it felt a little like he'd lost his family again. But that was stupid and he put it out of his mind. He hadn't lost his family. He didn't believe Uncle Luke. He wouldn't ever believe him because Dean wasn't dead.

=+= 

On days that someone else brought the food, Sam made sure to wait until Uncle Luke came and told him it was okay to feed himself. If he didn't, the food sat untouched, no matter how loud Sam's stomach roared. When it was like that, Sam told himself his ABCs endlessly; sometimes he did it well enough to leave that place and go somewhere nicer. He wished the nice place was somewhere he could go outside of his head.

Once his food sat in his cell for two days, and Sam shook and drooled and shook harder, eyes never leaving the metal pan but he didn't touch it, he didn't even scoot closer to it. He just forced himself back from it far as he could get and stared. Soft whines leaked out of him no matter how hard he tried to keep them inside.  
When his cell door creaked open at last, Sam pulled in tighter, only lifting his eyes to see Uncle Luke filling the doorway. He had something in his hand and a satisfied smile on his face. "Well, haven't you just been the good little boy? That's my very good boy, my Samyaza."

Sam shook harder. Thankful that Uncle Luke had been pleased in some way; anxious because this was new, and experience had taught him new was hardly ever good. 

Uncle Luke sat a tray on the floor. He called Sam over and Sam crawled fast as he could, his knees too shaky to let him stand. Uncle handed him a cup, with the pennies coke in it, and some toast. When Sam ate the toast, Uncle pointed to the metal pan of old food, already beginning to smell bad. "Here. Eat it," he said. Sam jerked, hesitated a second before swallowing hard and reaching out to the mess. His fingers broke through the crust that had formed over the food. He hooked a few fingers full of it and opened his mouth, the food on the edge of his lips, his mouth already drooling for food no matter how bad it smelled…

Uncle Luke started laughing, bending at the knees, tears running down his face, he laughed so hard. Sam hesitated, eyes on the man, wonder and fear freezing him in place. "Nah, don’t eat that."

Relief hit Sam so hard that he almost missed Uncle Luke replacing the old food with fresh. He'd been terrified to eat the bad food, afraid of vomiting. Sam had no desire to lick the concrete floor clean again…his tongue burned in phantom pain at the flash of memory. "Go on, Samyaza. You go on and eat the new stuff," Uncle Luke said. 

Sam tentatively brushed past Uncle and shoved handfuls of fresh food in his mouth. The pennies coke was already making him feel better, sharper. Everything around him got sharper and clearer and he felt like he was bigger and brighter himself. _Samyaza,_ Uncle Luke kept saying. Sam wondered what it meant

=+= 

Sam tripped on his mat and fell to his knees. "Ouch," he yelped and the sound startled him, loud in the damp emptiness of the basement. The echoes were dying out when Sam realized—he couldn't remember the last time he'd spoken aloud. Uncle Luke didn't like the sound of Sam's voice, and Sam learned quickly to keep quiet. He just hadn't realized that he'd stopped talking altogether unless Uncle demanded words.

When Uncle Luke brought him food that evening, he risked asking, his voice so low and rough and ugly he hardly recognized himself, "Where am I?"

Uncle Luke screwed his face up like he'd smelled something bad; he pushed his palm against Sam's face. "And you were doing so good. No speaking unless I tell you to." Uncle Luke's hand wrapped around Sam's face and it was such a warm contrast to the constant chill, it was almost pain. He waited for Uncle Luke to hurt him, but his hand just lay there, curled around him. Warm, not hard, a perfect cup on his aching cheek and Sam's eyes drifted shut. He leaned into the pressure as much as he dared. Uncle Luke chuckled and rubbed his hand over Sam's head; the touch felt so good that Sam shivered. Uncle asked him, "Are you cold? Hungry?" Sam opened his mouth and Uncle moved his hand to wrap around Sam's throat. He didn't squeeze, only tightened the grip enough for Sam to tell that it was possible for Uncle to squeeze much harder…he closed his mouth and shook his head. 

"See there, you're learning," Uncle Luke said. "And since you've shown me you're not as stupid as you look, I got a little something for you."

Uncle Luke held out his hand—between his fingers hung a dog collar. Sam froze inside. He darted his eyes from side to side trying to see where the dog was, and Uncle laughed again. "It's yours, dummy—a brand new, shiny present for Samyaza." Uncle buckled it on, just a hair too tight; Sam wasn't sure if it was meant to be that way, but he was afraid to ask. Uncle Luke yanked on the round, black tag hanging from the collar. "You can't read it, but It's written right here. Samyaza. Not a little hairless, nameless ape anymore. Now you're the Owner's new dog."

_Samyaza…_ Uncle was making some kind of mistake—he wasn't Samyaza. That was wrong. Sam knew he only had one name and that was Samuel. "My name is Samuel, Samuel Winchester, don't—"

The pain that shot through him felt like barbed wire coated in lightning, dragged through him mouth first and pulled out of his ass. All through him little branches of pain weaved and twisted before breaking out through his skin. He heard Uncle's happy little laugh. 

Uncle Luke waved a thing like a tiny remote control at him. "Wanna tell me your name again?"

"Samue—" This time the pain came pouring out of his eyes, pain and hot tears that tasted like pennies—"Samyaza," he gagged, "Samyaza—"

"See? I knew you weren't terminally stupid. Now…shut. Up."

Sam nodded and waited for all the barbed wire to spool out of him. Uncle Luke left him alone to sleep after that. The water was warm when they hosed him off. It woke him but it didn't hurt.

=+= 

**May 1993**

_Uncle Luke told him that when he got bigger, he'd have classes._  
Sam wondered what classes were. He had a faint memory of someone soft and warm whispering _we'll have our own class_ like it was meant only for Sam to hear. If Sam concentrated really hard, he saw big green eyes and pink cheeks rounded by a smile. Soft hands. He thought the person might be his, maybe his brother…possibly, but it might be just be a dream, not a memory. He had so many dreams, good and bad, it was hard to tell what was real and what wasn't…

 _Classes._ Maybe classes meant the same as ABCs. If they were the same, he wouldn't let Uncle Luke know he knew them already. He had the feeling it'd be better not to let Uncle know what he could do or what was on his mind, or that he had any thoughts at all. He rolled a little tighter on the soft rug Uncle kept in his office for him and tried to sleep, but he'd had his pennies coke, and as usual, it made him restless. Uncle Luke was yelling in the phone and that made it harder to sleep, too. He sighed inside. _A B C D E A N…now I know my abcs abcdean, now I know my abcs. Abcdean, now I…._

"We're trying to keep under the radar, does Yellow Eyes get that? We need a few years for this bunch, or he's starting from zero with a new bunch of brats. Dead school kids showing up in dumpsters ain't quite the same as dead bums. People tend to get interested when it's _kids."_ Uncle Luke slammed the phone shut and tossed it on his desk. "Fuckin' idiots."

He looked down at Sam and Sam tried to make a smile face. He did it when he wanted Uncle Luke to laugh because a laughing Uncle was a mostly not a hurting one. Uncle did laugh, smoothing the jabbing edges of his thoughts a bit, and Sam sighed inside with relief. Uncle's laughter died out, his eyes still on Sam. Then he stood, pulled his pants down and Sam just stared. He looked up at Uncle Luke, puzzled. Was he going to pee on the office floor?

"Come here, Samyaza," Uncle said, his eyes and face all strange but he was smiling so Sam thought that must be good….

=+= 

It was not long after that afternoon that the first move came, at least the first move Sam remembered. Sam whined and fretted—if that green-eyed boy wanted to find him, he'd never find him now. Not that Sam had great hopes for such a thing happening, it'd just become something he was used to thinking, like ABCs and Once upon a time and Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.

That move brought them to someplace that looked like a farm. There were big, big fields, green and gold, the grass so tall he couldn't see over it. He liked the way it waved like water in the wind. The sky was wide and a very bright blue, like Uncle Luke's eyes, but the sky was nice to look at anyway. A wooden fence surrounded the farm as far as Sam could see. Every day that they stayed there, Sam had to run alongside that fence until Uncle thought he'd run enough, then Sam could stop and rest, get food and water. Even so, he liked the farm; he liked the good smelling air and the open after spending so much time in one little damp, dark room. He liked the open even if sometimes he slept outside on a chain. It was good for him—he stopped being afraid of the dark after a while, stopped crying for something he couldn't quite understand. He learned to run fast and for a long time without needing to stop. He felt stronger, bigger, maybe even a bit braver.

They moved again, to a very small house near water. A lake so big he could barely see the far shore. 

The house was tiny and all of one floor—no basement. Most nights, he slept on the kitchen floor. It was warm in the kitchen, and quiet, and that was good, but sometimes he slept in Uncle Luke's bed. It was warm too and the bed was soft, but he hated the smell, the way Uncle breathed. 

Sam had learned early on that with the bad things there also came some good things, if he looked for them. And although at first the lake was part of the bad things, as time passed, Sam came to see the good. Good was the way sun-warmed sand under his bare feet felt nice, and the water…he loved to watch it move, loved the way it looked. It shimmered under the sky, reflecting clouds above. It fascinated Sam, and scared him too. He shivered each time he stepped into its cool touch, felt little stones roll and sand shift under his feet. The collar came off at the lake—no shocks, and that was very good. Swimming was good, in a way. He was careful—knew that the water could take him, deep and down, if he wasn't. But once he was in the water he was in his own world, a place that only belonged to him.

At this place, Sam swam every day. Rain or shine, he swam in the lake while Uncle's man stood on the shore watching him, face twisted like he smelled something bad. His thoughts rolled and bounced, shot through with Sam's name, tinged grey with unfocused fear. The man hated him, but feared Uncle more. Smart man. Sam swam hard so he couldn't feel his thoughts, swam until the muscles in his arms and legs knotted up and he'd drown if Uncle's man wasn't there to drag him out of the water. But…he learned to block other's thoughts, he learned to hold his breath for a very long time, and his muscles became hard like steel. At the end, when they moved again, water held no mystery for him.

=+= 

**June 1995**  


_Time passed. Sam grew taller, and with growth came restless nights, filled with throbbing pains that sometimes made him wake from sleep crying._  
He wasted sleep time trying to find some comfortable place for his bones. Dreams pulled him this way and that, unsettling him. He'd wake sometimes to a voice he knew was the boy's whispering to him, but what it said, he could never remember. Once, he had a dream that made him roll off his mattress, desperate and needing to look…for something, or maybe for someone. He crawled around the floor, searching. He hit the wall and the pain shook him fully awake. The tail end of the dream left words in his head. _"You eat Lucky Charms while I do my ABCs."_ Sam shook his head. It didn't make sense, but he felt much better and his legs didn't hurt so much. He even smiled a little as he curled up on his mattress and sank back down into sleep.

During the time Sam was shooting up, they moved again, and this was the best move, his favorite. This time Sam slept by himself in a big wooden barn, nestled deep in sweet-smelling straw, dry and warm. He had a heavy blanket he loved, even if it smelled of the horses that once had been there. He felt safe there, he felt something like happy, even if his days were spent climbing up and down the ropes that hung from the barn rafters. The barn was full of spots to hide and to explore, places to lay down in that were filled with sun. There were treasures to find, like a small blue egg he'd come across in the grass one day. He'd found it, and now it was his, more his than the clothes he wore or the blanket he slept with. 

Nothing made the barn place bad, not cold showers, not Uncle Luke, because the handfuls of minutes that belonged to him were totally his. He'd hide and think about the boy, imagine playing with him, imagine the boy looking out for him….

Eventually, as days grew longer and his life rolled on unchanged, he thought less and less about the boy, until finally he passed out of Sam's life like a memory of smoke.

=+= 

Sam was hiding in the barn. The night before, Uncle came and told him that they'd be leaving soon and none of Sam's trash was to come with. "None of that garbage, you hear? We don't have room for useless shit, Samyaza."

He sifted slowly through the hay in the corner of the last stall. This was his last chance to spend time with the few things he'd gathered. It was stupid. He'd always known it would never last, but this place, this barn, he'd loved. He rolled the little blue egg in his palm, enjoying the color and the feel of it against his skin. He sighed and laid it on the straw. There was a rock he'd found, with a hole through one end of it, there was a feather, the color of early night sky and ashes. He drew the feather across his lip and smiled a little at the feel—the smile dropped away and he climbed to his feet. He gathered up the pieces to throw in the trash fire. Stupid, to collect those things, but he'd just…he'd needed to. It was sad to lose them but it would have been sadder never to have had them at all….

=+= 

The smoke from the trash fire was drifting high overhead when the back door opened and he heard Uncle calling him.

"Samyaza—get in here and get ready, we have a party tonight. You know how much you love parties," Uncle laughed. Sam's stomach dropped right out. He shivered. Bad day, now a bad night coming. He glanced at the fire again and ran to the house.

=+= 

Sam crouched against the side of a big upholstered chair and tried to make himself smaller. It hadn't worked yet that night—his mouth was sore, and his head ached terribly but so far, he hadn't been called on to do anything else. His stomach rolled slowly, thickly…he gulped and gulped and hoped he wasn't going to be sick. There was a yank on his collar and his head whipped up. "There's someone who wants to talk to you, Samyaza."

A piece of the shadows pulled away, grew bigger until a tall man stood over him, yellow fire screaming out of the place his eyes should be. Sam blinked frantically, and the bloody mask became just a face with ordinary eyes, eyes that latched onto Sam's again. "This one…this one looks perfect. Our little Sammy. If you make it through these tests—and I know you will because you are truly my favorite—you'll have a huge load of responsibility to shoulder. And what big, wide shoulders they'll be one day." 

The man asked Uncle, "Are you taking care of my favorite little general? Are you making sure he grows the right way, my way?" Uncle Luke stammered and babbled and the man held up his hand, shaking his head. "Spare me. I don’t give a fuck what you do with him, just don’t break him," the man said. "Come here, Sam." And Sam shuffled forward, head down, on his knees like Uncle taught him. Sam reached up and put his hands on the man's thighs like he was taught but the man knocked him away with a harsh laugh. 

"No, thanks—it's not you, it's me. My tastes run quite a bit different than underage boy meat." He knelt over Sam, pulled him up until his lips were right at Sam's ear. "Here's a secret for ya, just you and me. If it all works out like we've planned, one day, everyone will kneel to _you."_ He grinned at Sam, curled long fingers over Sam's scalp and scratched, scratched…"Even your 'uncle', little general, if you want it. I promise you," he said. Sam closed his eyes and wished the man far, far away from him.

After the man left, Uncle said, "That was the Owner. He likes you. That's good. Some, he doesn't like much and they never last long after, them or their trainers." Uncle looked down at Sam. "Maybe lucky isn't the word but…" He shrugged. "Works for me," he said and sent Sam to his place.

They moved many, many times. Turns and turns of seasons, and everywhere they moved, Sam learned something else, gained something else. He grew taller, and stronger, and Uncle didn't call him as often to get in his bed or kneel by his feet. Sam had the feeling it was because he wasn't as little or as weak as he was once but he never thought very hard about it because he didn't care why—he was just glad not to be there. Whatever little bit of good Sam managed to squeeze out of what Uncle Luke did had never been enough to make Sam stop hating him. He wanted to burn Uncle up like his family had burned….

=+= 

**December 2001**

_The back of the truck opened, the sound of metal scraping against metal setting Sam on edge instantly._  
A big, scowling man hopped in the back and unlocked the cage Sam was twisted up in. "C'mon, ya poor fuck, we're here. Shake it." He poked Sam, hard, but his voice was almost kind and the grip he had on Sam's hand to help him to his feet was firm but not painful. He glanced at the man and away. He was just one of the many, unimportant, faceless men that drifted in and out of his life like smoke.

"Wait," the man said and handed Sam a coat and shoes. Sam crouched and quickly slid the shoes on, buttoned up the coat. The sudden warmth hurt almost as much as the cold. When they jumped down out of the truck, Sam stepped into a slushy, grey pile of snow. He lifted his head and sniffed around. The inside of his nose pricked with the bright scent of snow, mostly overpowered by the smell of gas, tar, garbage…cars splashed through watery snow, headlights bouncing light into the alleyway. It'd been a long time since they were anywhere lots of people lived. He shivered, his shoulders itched. He felt the weight of all those lives hiding in the buildings around them. He blinked slowly, as images rolled through him. People doing people things, laughing, hurting, bored, touching each other in ways that made his stomach clench and his prick twitch…so many feelings, more than he was used to all at once. He shook his head to clear the wandering thoughts, lifted his face to search out the moon above the rooftops. It was so bright he could see its light even in the narrow little alleyway the truck was parked in. It was snowing; little flakes pelted his face and stuck to his lashes. 

Uncle moved them into that place, the house lined in a row with other houses, and that night was the only time he saw the street the house was on. All day long he heard the sound of people living. He wondered if they belonged to Uncle Luke. He wondered if they wanted themselves dead. The days living at this house he spent walking back and forth in the dark room under the stairs. He lay on his mattress, tangled up in his blanket. He poked about in the piles of moldering junk shoved in the corners of the room. He watched furtive little mice dash across the room, avoiding his spot, so he avoided theirs. Their fearful excursions made his belly shake in silent laughter. He spent time staring at a little window high in the wall. He was fascinated by how the brightness and the color of light changed the window. Sometimes he could see the pale white light of the moon in it. He loved the window.

He was deep into a waking dream, face turned up to the window but gone far away—until Uncle Luke came to fetch Samyaza upstairs.

"This is it, Samyaza. We're in the home stretch—the payoff for me and a kingdom for you, if you're lucky. And of course, you don’t know what I mean, do you?" Uncle asked and Samyaza stared at the floor, giving his head a careful shake in case it wasn't a real question. "Don't worry 'bout it, you don’t have to know. It's not even important yet, not for you." Uncle walked while Sam shuffled after on his knees, making sure that he was facing Uncle wherever he happened to stop. They were in the room that smelled of beans and oatmeal, the kitchen. Uncle turned and gave Sam a long look. He pushed the crinkly mess of blonde-brown hair out of his eyes, and huffed. "This has been a real…this's been some crazy shit, that's for sure. We put a lot of years into you mutts, _I_ blew a lot of years." Sam lowered his head and hoped that Uncle Luke wasn't going to go from quiet to trying to beat whatever it was upsetting him out on Sam's skin. 

The back door opened and a freezing wind brought a strange man inside. Sam froze, worried. Visitors meant bad news and there was nothing about this man that made him feel otherwise. The man ignored Samyaza and focused on Uncle. He shrugged off a snow-damp coat and muttered, "Ready when you are, man."

Uncle snapped his fingers and Sam shuffled over fast as he could, his knees hooking against the rug. For a second, his heart clenched in bright pain—he kept moving, expecting punishment any second for wrinkling the rug. Uncle cursed. "Hurry the fuck up," he snapped and smacked the back of the chair. Sam gulped and crawled up on it, tried to curl small, but Uncle snapped again. "Sit up, damn it, back straight and sit still."

Sam whipped upright as Uncle walked around the chair, eyes locked on Sam. "Thirteen years." He sighed. "Well, we all knew what we were getting into. Gave up half our fuckin' lives for this. Thirteen years, thirteen mutts. And now it's almost over."

"Yeah, whatever," The stranger muttered. He laid out tools on the table, ignoring Sam like he was part of the chair. Sam broke into a clammy sweat. He eyed the tools warily; none of them were familiar and he wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not…new hardly ever meant good. Uncle gave the man a piece of paper. "Name, Owner's mark, same as the rest. But this one gets the crown symbol on his neck."

The stranger cocked an eyebrow and finally looked, really looked, at Sam. He raked eyes over him, a little frown on his lips and a cold interest in his eyes. "He looks normal. Why's he get a crown?" 

"Don’t worry about it; just do what I say."

There came a low buzzing noise and the man approached him, some odd thing in his hand. He stood over Sam and touched the thing to his face, and it made a strange feeling that grew and grew until Sam had to grind his teeth together to keep from crying out. It went on and on, the man stopping from time to time to wipe his cheek—blood came away on the white pad. Sam didn't make a sound, didn't move. He thought about the pain until it got distant and pale…turned to a steady throb that sent him deeper into his place inside….

"You're done," the stranger said and rubbed something on his cheek, and on his neck. He tilted Sam's head from side to side, the little frown slowly turning into a sketch of a smile. "All right then," he said and put tape over the throbbing places, and that was the extent of his interest in Sam. The man packed away his tools and when he was gone, Uncle turned to Sam. His smile was wider, a red blush tinting his cheeks darker. Sam was shaky when Uncle yanked him to his feet. 

"You're ready now. We put enough time in getting you all ready, _Little General."_ Uncle Luke sneered the words but they flowed over Samyaza like water—they had no meaning, so he ignored them and concentrated on the sound of them—smooth, satisfied, so Sam smiled. Uncle Luke rubbed his hand all over the bristly crown of Sam's head and Sam leaned into the touch. He rubbed his cheek against Uncle Luke, and Uncle laughed. "You're so trained, aren't you? Good little freak." He let go of Sam and Sam let the shock of his knees hitting the tile knock him back under the waves of the quiet place. Uncle said, "How 'bout one for old time's sake?" and he unzipped, pulled his pants down. Sam smiled wider, and then opened his mouth.

Sam imagined a huge, black sky filled with thick, grey clouds, with streaks of lightning flashing from cloud to cloud. He imagined standing on a bone white shore in front of a big, black lake, so big there was no opposite shore in sight, so wide he couldn't see any edges, just water and Uncle Luke, swimming and swimming in the middle of the lake and no one to drag him back out when he started to drown….

Sam's jaw was aching to match the ache in his cheek by the time Uncle Luke gripped the back of his head, and there was no breathing until Uncle came. He smeared the come and spit around Sam's chin and lips, careful not to touch the aching cheek. "Tomorrow, you're gonna find a whole new world. You'll meet other little princes. The Owner says it's time to get some return on his investment. I think he's right about you..." Uncle Luke said, his voice going weirdly soft. Sam winced. He didn't trust any moment Uncle's voice went that soft, quiet tone.

=+= 

It was just beginning to lighten in his basement place—the sound of rain hitting the window had him up earlier than usual, and now he was sitting on his mattress, eating his breakfast. The room was washed a weak grey from whatever light managed to make it through the dirty window. Sam kind of liked it, the way it made everything seem like a dream. He was going to eat his food and pretend it was a good dream. He was just licking the last of the oatmeal off his fingers when Uncle came stomping down the stairs. Sam threw the pan aside and dropped to his knees. He waited for whatever thing Uncle Luke wanted him for but Uncle just snapped his fingers. Sam raised his head and was face to face with a very big, shaggy dog.

"Say hi to the new pup," Uncle Luke said and Sam and the dog both flinched. The dog peered at Sam, yellow eyes in a black mask. His wet nose twitched, sniffing the air carefully as Sam whispered a shaky hello. It craned its neck to sniff harder and Uncle took his hand off the collar buckled around the dog's neck, a collar just like Sam's, a little black tag on it the same as Sam's. 

The dog leaped at him, mouth closed but growling like thunder and Sam broke Kneel, scrambled back against the wall. If he could just get to the crates in the corner, maybe the dog couldn't touch him. He'd much rather take a beating for disobeying than be ripped to pieces by the dog. 

"Sit," Uncle barked and both the dog and Sam froze. "Let him sniff you," Uncle said and Sam shivered as the dog sniffed him from neck to toe. Sam squeezed his eyes tight when he felt its cold, wet nose dig into his armpit—when teeth grazed his neck he waited for them to dig in, but they only tugged briefly at his collar and moved away. Sam eased his eyes open a bit just as the dog turned its head away. The light caught its eyes in an odd way—they looked less yellow and dog-like, almost…Uncle snapped his fingers and the dog came back to his side but kept its eyes on Sam. Sam felt something odd, something heavy in its gaze, but the look he'd caught a few seconds ago was gone. The tip of the dog's tail swept the floor, back and forth. 

"You'll be careful of him," Uncle said as he walked the dog away. Sam wasn't sure who he was talking to.

It was puzzling, though he should be used to not understanding what Uncle did or why. Still, scary as the dog had been, he hadn't really felt anything bad from it; in fact, the dog felt smooth and warm in his head. Sam was curious, enough to want to see the dog again. Though better at the end of a nice, thick chain, he thought and chuckled quietly to himself.

 

Later that afternoon, Uncle Luke came back to the basement, handed him a big cup of water and told him to drink up, drink it all. He must have been very tired, because after a minute or so his legs felt like wet sand, and he lay down on his mattress. He sighed, and fidgeted. He turned one way, and then another. It felt like his skin was creeping on his bones, little hitches and twitches that kept startling him awake, and it was only when he jumped that he even realized he'd been sleeping. He felt his arms yanked up but he wasn't sure if he was dreaming that, he felt the ground under him sway and then, nothing but sound, sound, sleep.

2

=+= 

Cold prickled over Sam's skin, poking its way into a dream about food, lots and lots of food, all soft, pretty colors and odd shapes. Sam heard himself laughing, could feel his lips move in his sleep and that made the dream fade….

Sleep time was becoming waking up time. Sam frowned and shifted to pull more blanket around himself, tried willing himself back into sleep. He curled his shoulders in, adjusting for his feet coming off the end of the mattress, but there was no end of the mattress. His toes didn’t scrape against concrete and his blanket felt odd, heavier—he froze. Something was wrong. His eyes flew open and he rolled upright, scooting away from the light as he did. The ceiling was high, so high that even standing on a stack of crates he wouldn't be able to touch it. The walls were so far apart it felt like being outside. Wires hung everywhere from the ceilings, draping over pipes like vines, crisscrossing over the long, acid bright tubes of lights that hung from the ceiling too. It stank, like trucks and cold and piss. He shuddered, his skin pebbling with the cold air. 

This was bad, very bad…he'd gone to sleep in the basement and woke in some terrible other place. Maybe this was a dream—if it was, he wanted to wake up now. But when he scrambled backwards off the mattress, the bars behind him were very cold, very solid. He was in a cage in a row of cages, each one filled. Boys and girls, some looking as blank and shocked as Sam felt, others crying...Sam wanted to cry too, for the first time in a long time. A boy in the next cage shook his head, pretending to wipe his eyes, and shook his head again. _no crying_ Sam stared at him at him until the boy turned away, the chain around his neck shifting across the tiled floor. Sam was glad he wasn't chained, too.

=+= 

Not long after Sam was fully awake, Uncle Luke and some strange men came into the huge room, talking loudly to each other, their excitement boiling off them and sweeping over Sam in sick waves. He wavered between kneeling and trying to pretend he was still asleep, but one of the men was walking down the length of cages, banging on the bars with a long metal pole, shouting, "Wake up, mutts, wake up!"

The other kids straggled to their feet, some alert, some sleepy. One of the men unreeled a chain as the cages were unlocked, and Uncle called one after the other of the boys and girls to him—strange names, strange kids. They were locked by their collars to the chain. When Uncle called out, "Samyaza," Sam trotted up to the spot Uncle pointed at. Sam wondered briefly how far he'd get before he was taken down while he lifted his neck to make it easier for one of the men to lock him to the chain. His hands were cold; his dark eyes glittered like oil. Sam tilted his head back as far as he could and closed his eyes. He felt…nothing. Blank, still water. Empty sky, dry grass…he opened his eyes again and stared at the man in front of him. His glittering eyes were empty as his mind. Uncle grinned and nudged Sam. "Tell Master Zee thank you, you'll see a lot of him in the coming future." 

Sam felt something from the master then, the skinniest tendril of annoyance, curling towards Uncle Luke. The man looked back at Sam and said, "I'm going to teach you to fight, so that what you see next won't happen to you." He turned to the next boy, his attention gone from Sam like he didn't exist. 

_Master Zee._ Blankness…he'd never experienced thoughts like Master Zee's before, not sharp, not crumbly or sticky or…not anything. He liked it, he was drawn to it.

They were all chained, and then made to march across the floor. After the first few kids who stumbled and pulled them off their feet were beaten for it, they quickly learned to pace themselves and keep each other upright. The place they were in was huge, big as outdoors. They moved down a big slope and around a bend and out through a big set of doors into another huge room, brighter than outdoors. Uncle pulled on the chain and brought them to a stop next to a chain-link fence set up in a square. There were owners sprawled in chairs sat around the fence. There were other kids on chains, across the chain-link square. He could see them kneeling in the shadows. The air smelled like shit, like blood….A scream made the kids on Uncle's chain jump in fear, everyone staggered, the sudden movement making them unsteady. The boy who'd first warned him not to cry tugged on his arm. _Fight,_ he mouthed. Sam tilted his head and the boy understood Sam meant he was confused. The boy pointed at what was happening inside the chain-link. Sam turned his head just in time to see a red-eyed black dog, jaws stuffed with long, sharp teeth, rip a chunk right out of a girl…the owners leaped up at her screams, some cheering, some booing and Sam saw with shock that there were humans sitting with the owners just like they belonged. They clapped right along when the girl was dragged out of the square, blood leaving a wide trail behind her. The black dog stood in the center, shaking blood off its jaws and pawing at the stained concrete.

Uncle walked down the chain until he came to the thin little boy standing with Sam. He unlocked him and shoved him towards the fence. "Game-time, 'walker."

Sam jerked forward, hands out, when the boy fell to the ground and seized violently—before Sam took more than a step, he'd scrambled up on his hands and knees, shaking. He made a noise--not pained, more of a sigh, like something heavy slid off him. 

Sam blinked and was looking at a dog instead of a boy. The dog turned his head towards Sam. Yellow eyes Sam recognized gleamed out of a black mask; the dog shook his shaggy body and raced into the ring. "Get 'im, Iz," Uncle Luke shouted, and laughed. Sam could barely hear him over the excited screams of owners and the owners' humans.

Sam watched the boy—dog—tear the black dog to bits. That afternoon, one more kid came off Uncle's chain, and died behind the fence to cheers and catcalls. The one who called himself Master Zee put the boy who was also a dog back on the chain again. Sam felt something from him this time—a chilly kind of satisfaction. "Good work in the ring, Israfil. Well done," he told the silent boy. Israfil stood calmly, slowly blinking big, pale brown eyes and absolutely coated from head to toe with blood—he reeked with the sulfur/honey stink of it. He blinked, and gave Sam a small, shy smile. His teeth looked very white in the strip of blackening blood around his mouth.

All over the room, jagged, jangling, _crazy_ thoughts beat at Sam, fire and blood and sick excitement drowning him until he was desperate to beat his own brains out and then…Uncle came down the chain again and gave everyone a can of coke. Sam gulped it down, for the first time glad for the taste of pennies and what it meant. He calmed himself enough that he was able to smile back at the bloody little boy without wanting to throw up.

So now, Sam knew. Everything he'd learned without knowing he was learning it fell into place, everything finally made sense. His purpose was clear—fight or die. The Owner made them for this, and it was for the Owner's pleasure that the caged kids fought. Sam didn't care why—none of them cared. They only cared about survival. Sam was determined to walk out of the ring at the end of the day.

=+= 

Change of place, change of life, change, always change. Sam had new lessons now, they were defined, specific. Sam learned how to fight with a knife, where to cut to let a person's insides out, where to cut to cripple or to kill. How to kill with a rope, a stick, his bare hands. How to do it fast or slow. He wanted to live so he killed. Uncle said he adapted, that's what made him special. Killing was something he became good at…maybe that explained the why of his life.

=+= 

His first time in the training ring, first fight, he was so scared he couldn't breathe, couldn't think. Uncle Luke said the Owner wanted the kids broken-in the fast way, especially wanted to see if Sam had what it took. "If you come back out, you get a reward," Uncle whispered in his ear, right before he kicked Sam into the roped-off square with a grin.

Lights ringed the walls, shone on the floor, and cast the rest of the big shed they were using as a training ground into shadow. He could feel watchers there, smell them; the bright copper-iron, honey-sulfur scent of them made his mouth water, his belly twist…  
It was nothing like he'd imagined it'd be like, it was like no nightmare he'd ever had.

The match went on, on and on; there was more blood than he'd ever seen before, it was everywhere. Some weird, wild, slithery thing inside made him laugh, because he'd thought that the blood he'd spilled before, when it was just his own, was terrifying. Now he knew better. In the shadows around the pit, the watchers laughed too. "Good boy, Samyaza," he heard.

They fought back and forth across the square. The other boy was similar in build and skill to himself, and it was taking a long time to win. Fighting had long since become stumbling, become falling. The two of them were exhausted, slipping around in each other's blood; they could barely lift their hands, move their feet. The boy tripped and fell to one knee, blinded by the blood in his eyes, and Sam ripped the last bit of his strength from somewhere deep inside himself. In his next breath, he closed his teeth over the shuddering pulse in the boy's throat—pulled until flesh tore and blood sprayed and the boy was so worn, so exhausted, he could barely scream. He shuddered all over and was still. Sam gagged violently; he vomited on the corpse and passed out. But the Owner was pleased, and Uncle Luke carried him out of the ring in his arms, even though Sam was filthy.

That evening the man with the bag came, and Uncle held Sam down as the man took a wire and burned a new mark on the back of Sam's shoulder, inked a crown on his chest. Uncle smiled at Sam. "Look at you. Look what you did. A crown for a general, Samyaza. Owner's pleased; you made his enemies look stupid, and proved his choice right. And with this," Uncle lightly scraped a fingernail over the burning spot on his arm and Sam jerked forward, a high-pitched whine breaking past his ability to hold it back. The pain roared through him. "No one's gonna be wearing you, lucky little bitch." 

_Lucky?_ Sam curled over and threw up between his feet. The stink of burning meat, the volcanic pain in his shoulder, the _memory_ of how that boy's skin felt between his teeth, the sudden gush of blood against the back of his throat, it was _horrible_ and beat against Sam's brain again and again until Sam felt like he was lost inside his own head.

"It'll get better," Uncle said. "Trust me, after a while, you'll crave this."

=+= 

Uncle Luke's instruction for the kids in the cages was to get to know each other. Find out what made the other tick, because that way they'd know how to kill each other. Uncle Luke thought it was funny, but Sam didn't laugh and neither did the rest of the kids. Still, it was good advice, so Sam watched, learned as much as possible. Like Zaqiel, big, strong, beautiful—stronger than all of them combined, strong enough to hold a werewolf's jaws shut, to snap its neck. He had a big heart, but he ran too hot; it was easy to get him too angry to think.

There was Asael, nervous, always sticking to the shadows. Who snuck into brains and twisted them around his fingers like grass stems. Even so, he had a light in his eyes that Sam liked. There was Ananiel, quiet, kind against all odds, always one step ahead of them in time, and Tamiel, pretty as the morning sky, whose touch struck like lightning. And Israfil the little skinwalker, soft and sweet like honey. There were more of them, all the twisted children, all alone in their cages…all meat on the Owner's table.

Master Zee worked every one of them hard and fast. Sam appreciated Master. All he wanted was to train them—beyond that, he didn't give a shit about them. That was reflected in the smooth, cold desert inside Master Zee's head. Sam almost loved him for that quiet. Every touch of his mind was like gliding though snow…not clean, but cool. Quiet. It relaxed Sam to know that all Master wanted from them was their best—that or death. Easy.

"Go," Master shouted and Samyaza broke Kneel, leaped to his feet and cautiously rounded an already moving Zaqiel, his eyes locked on him as he moved backwards step by step, waiting. Zack was never patient and—just like Sam expected—he rushed Sam, his head down and arms churning. He depended on his weight and strength to overpower his opponent. Sam waited until the last possible second, jumped aside and came back down at slightly to the left of Zack. He brought both fists down between the boy's shoulder blades but held, and Zaqiel froze too. Sam ran through moves in his head, fast as he could. Should he move away now or drop Zack? Beat him unconscious or kill him? What did Master Zee want of him?

Master Zee barked, "Stop!" and all the kids came to a halt. He made them come close and pointed at Samyaza's hands, still fisted and resting in between Zaqiel's shoulders. The skin was hot under his fists and Sam knew Zack would be hurting later. Master Zee spoke on, "In the ring, you'll want to do that on the back of your opponent's neck. It will break like a candy stick. It's a good move in the ring, good for anything but the bloodsuckers. You—" he pointed at Zack. "You lost your temper, _again._ It worked against you. It was energy wasted." The crew shuffled, trying to move away from Zaqiel without actually moving. "Maybe next time you fight a wolf, we'll do without the silver wash." 

Sam flinched. Zaqiel fought weres essentially bare-handed. Without treatments, he'd turn…he danced on the edge as it was. They knew what happened to the werewolves, the vampires, the monsters. Sam knew the way Uncle treated him was worlds and worlds better than he treated the not-human monsters. Zack's big brown eyes turned up to Master Zee, long lashes beginning to clump with moisture. A tear rolled down his cheek and dripped off his chin. His voice warbled briefly but steadied as he spoke. "Yes, sir," he said, "sorry, sir. Do better."

"Get up. Go wait in the punishment cell." Master Zee then turned to Sam. "Samyaza. You're slow. Sloppy. If Zaqiel wasn't incompetent, you'd be dead. You hit him and then stood there, waiting to get killed. You move, strike, and then move away. Idiot. If you were in a ring, you'd be dead. If you were street fighting, you'd be dead. You're worthless."

Sam dropped his head. He wished now he had killed Zack. Then maybe Master Zee would let up on him. He'd been riding Sam nonstop. Sam felt a slight tremor work its way up his arms and flow out through his fingers. He felt the ghost of cramps through his midsection that he got when a few days went by without reward. His body knew there was no reward coming this day. Master Zee stared hard at him, and then snorted in disgust—Sam even felt it, a brief, hot lick of revulsion. "Get out of my ring."

Sam ran lightly for the door, stopped when Zee called. "Go to your spot, now."

Sam nodded and felt tears prick at the back of his eyes. He'd failed miserably. And he'd been trying so hard. Next time, he would kill Zaqiel…Sam sighed, disgusted with himself. No he wouldn't…he couldn't. There were some of the crew who'd become…Sam tried to think of a word, something to describe what they were…unkillable. Unkillable, yes, it suited his feeling about them. Sam's stomach twisted thinking of Iz dead, or Tami. He wouldn't like any of them dead. Besides, right now, Zack was probably wishing he had been killed—even shaking through sweats and cramps and trying not to shit the cage, even with his teeth chattering so loud it was like his ears were inside his mouth, Sam could hear Zaqiel screaming.

=+= 

**May 2002**

_Sam made his way quietly between the cages, letting the others sleep._  
Mumbling, rising and falling, came from the end of the dark hallway where he was headed. He flattened himself against the wall and slipped into the darkness like a shadow. At the end of that hall, there was another cage, one he was curious about. His eyes took a moment to adjust to the increased darkness; this far back the light tubes were dimmer—some were dead. He smelled a deep musk, rank with sweat and dirt but underneath, a thick sort of animal smell he liked. He crept closer. There was a tangle of rags and a dark mound of something pressed against the bars of the cage. Sam called out softly, "Hello?"

The mound in the cage unfolded into a man-shape—it reared its head. "What the fuck—get out of here, you little shit. Get the fuck away." 

A long, thin and very dirty arm shot out through the bars of the cage, clawed fingers grabbing for Sam. Sam slithered easily out of reach. "Who are you?" he asked.

"Me? I'm no one, nosy little fuck," it laughed, high and bitter and the rank smell got stronger. Sam took the chance and crept close again and now he could make out a skeletal man, shaved head, whole body painted with thick streaks of filth. He squatted in the cage, his bloodshot eyes gleaming at Sam. Worn clothing hung like washing from his too thin frame and he coughed hard, flecks of blood spattering the yellowish skin around his mouth. Dried blood crinkled and flaked in the corners when he snarled. Sam considered the man. There were burns up and down his arms, on his cheeks—the bars must be inlaid with silver, Sam thought.

The bony wreck shivered and hacked again, blood bubbling from his nose. He swiped at it carelessly, glanced at the smear, wiped it on his pants leg. At one time he must have been imposing, judging from his wide shoulders and big hands, taller than Sam. Sickness had leached all the caramel out of his skin, leaving him a pale yellow shadow of himself, listless and bitter.

"Last of the Atision pack," he crowed suddenly, startling Sam. "Me, me, last, last, all by myself." He turned a red eye on Sam and hissed, "You know what it's like to outlast your whole pack? 'Course you don't, fucking alone anyways, always alone lone. _Freaksssss._ Freak spawn killing each other over kibble. Ambulatory chum." The man coughed again, moist and thick, his chest rattled with the effort of it. Sam heard that noise and knew it meant the man was dying slowly. He was prey now, an easy kill, but Sam felt some odd, useless little flicker of sympathy for the werewolf. He sank down to sit on the floor. Gazed up at the were, riding the dizzying ebb and flow of his sanity.  
The were hacked wetly and spit at the floor between his long bony feet. Sam's eyes darted to the blob of bright red there. "Blood-doped chimera. Lost. You don’t even know, do you? Alone…" The werewolf's eyes focused, when he spoke again, his voice warbled but he was _there._ "Can't live without a pack, you know? Can't live a real life without it. Can't wait to die. Fuckin' wolf in me won’t let loose, though, just can't let go," he laughed, high and shaky. "The wolves just don’t grasp the idea of suicide."

Tears ran down the man's face and Sam came closer, curious. He shivered at the slippery black roiling through the crazy, a feeling like…like one of the other kids gave out before he snapped his own neck on a climbing rope. Ah…it was a bad, dark feeling. "So, tell me what pack means," Sam asked without really thinking. "Explain."  
The werewolf stared at Sam for a long minute, so long that Sam got up again to leave, but the man said, "Okay. You want to know? Okay, little freak, I'll tell you but you won't understand. You can't. Pack is…pack is _pack,"_ he began. "We are one, and we are many…were many…."

By the end of the next full moon, the were was dead in the ring. Sam began to think about the things the werewolf had told him. Sam started to see something of what the wolf had meant when he'd explained _pack_ , especially as Sam dragged the bodies of the losers to the pits dug in the woods. Sam could see the benefit of working together to make sure they all came out of the ring in one piece. He was sure he could make the idea of pack work, bind them together. 

The day he'd first opened his eyes in that warehouse, there had been thirteen boys and girls. Now there were six, counting himself; six that the owner seemed pleased with, but they'd die anyway—in the ring, in training—unless things changed. Sam saw the value of pack…he saw the safety of it. Izrafil was there already, because of what he was, because he'd already attached himself to Sam, not that Sam minded. There were other parts of pack life that Izrafil explained, some good, some not. When they were allowed to share spots, Iz showed him what was good, wrapped around him when they slept. Nice when Iz wrapped slim, dry hands around Sam and made nice noises. He didn't mind it at all. But they could have more than that, all of them could. He just had to be careful….

The next time they were let loose to walk in the sun, Sam walked slowly and carefully up to Asael, hands up, and head tilted. "We need to speak," he whispered, "where they can't see us."

Asael peered at him suspiciously, but with a tiny, tiny flicker of hope in his worried eyes. "Let me see your thoughts," he said. Sam took a deep breath and thinned a spot in the wall he'd built around himself….

=+= 

**June 2003**

_There had been thirteen, now there were six._  
Sam had the blood of two on his hands but they hadn't been pack then. Now they were pack and there were still six of them. The Owner watched them, well aware of the change. He seemed pleased with Sam, very pleased. Could be because they won all their bouts…maybe it was something else. Sam was relieved; he'd been worried that all they were supposed to do was die. But no, ever since they'd built their pack, Sam only ever felt a thick, sticky sense of satisfaction from the Owner.

The dead werewolf who'd unknowingly saved their lives was replaced by a new one. This one was different—this one didn't curse until they were hoarse and bite at their own flesh, roll in their filth…Sam wondered if this one was sane. 

When Sam came to welcome the new wolf into their pack, she screamed with laughter, and hocked a thick glob of spit in his face. Sam calmly wiped it off with the edge of his t-shirt while she slammed her face into the bars until the skin split and she was bleeding. Sam backed away from the bars, out of range of the splatter. Well, he had his answer—definitely insane. She threatened to tear them all to bits and pee on the shreds for daring to call themselves _pack._

"They're my pack; show a little respect for them—"

"Pack? Pack? You half-demon freak! You're just—top dog of a buncha ratty little mutts. You don’t know pack if it fucked you in the ass, you little shit!" she cried. "If you knew what it was like to be cut off—" she shuddered—"you wouldn't pretend…get _OUT!"_ She reared back and spit at Sam again, cursed him until he finally left her alone.

She didn't know anything, Sam thought. He did know what it was like to not be pack. It was death and waiting for the one next to you to kill you in the night. It was lonely and cold and now, it wasn't. This was them together, this was pack. This was all they had.

=+= 

Being pack helped, but it didn't always mean they won. And a few nights past, Sam had lost—bad.

One moment of inattention…he'd had the fighter down, he'd felt the win. He'd pushed his arm into her throat and felt her windpipe crack. He'd felt it like deep satisfaction, his prick went heavy between his legs and he'd known, this one was his. The crowd howled when he'd yanked her pants down, the Owner shouting his approval—it was his right; in that moment, in the ring, he'd owned her. She'd lain loose against the floor, barely moving as Sam pushed his hips against her. He'd had his own pants open, just enough to pull out his prick, already stiff. His hand wrapped around it and he'd squeezed, hard. That…it wasn't the feeling he had with Iz or Ana…it was always different, crazy, tangled… _different._ He'd wanted to scream. He'd wished what he always wished—that he could kill all of them, everyone, the thought making his prick jump and he'd bit his cheek until the blood dripped to keep from screaming out loud….. 

He'd felt her heart thundering against his chest, how she went cold through their thin t-shirts. He'd felt blood under the hand he held over her mouth, the whimpers gasped into his palm. Tears had rolled from the corners of her closed eyes and for one second, one moment, less than a blink, he'd felt sorry for her—he was _her,_ had been in that place. 

His arm slipped, his hips stilled. And she'd reared up and locked her legs around him, flipping him and slamming his head against the floor. The pain bleached the world white, but he'd seen her spit a glittering, little knife into her palm, no bigger than the tip of his finger. He jerked and the tiny knife missed his throat, had opened the skin over his collarbone instead, so clean at first he didn't feel it. It skipped off the bone and over his shoulder into the ground. And then Tami was there.

Tamiel grabbed her by the hair and yanked, screaming in rage—in the end, the fighter had been nothing but a heap of flesh smoking away next to him—

That fighter had almost killed him, but worse, he'd lost them the fight and he'd lost points. He'd cost the Owner…what, Sam didn’t know, just…it was bad. Very bad.

=+= 

Bad meant the punishment cell. He'd already been in the cell a few days as far as he could tell, sitting alone in the dark. The door creaked open, startling him, and when the single bulb that lit the cell flicked on, he curled in against the sudden, painful, shock. He tried to move away from the door but his knotted muscles wouldn’t let him. Cramps that had started out mild and annoying were now taking huge gnawing, grinding bites out of him. When he smelled the pennies coke that Uncle Luke carried to him, his mouth burst with saliva, running down his chin before he could catch it. He watched Uncle Luke put the drink on the floor of the cell. When Uncle turned to Sam, the light caught the whip he held. He swished it gently over the floor, _shish, shish_ as the tiny hooks braided in the whip caught against the concrete.

"You know the rules, Samyaza. You lost the fight. You know that brought us down. Lucky for you, your stupid mistake didn't lose us any of the crew. Go to the corner, hold the post." 

Sam ran to the corner, shucked off the tattered t-shirt and gripped the post until his knuckles popped, went white with the strain. 

"Sloppy, that's what Zee said. Said you weren't focused. Weak. Tsk." Uncle Luke shook his head. "You make me sad, Sam, and the Owner too. So sad." But he was grinning from ear to ear. "Three strikes, dog boy, that's all. Ready now, Sam, rea—"

The first strike made Sam scream. The second made him fall to his knees. At the third, he just tried to keep breathing. He felt blood run down his back, though not as much as he expected. Uncle emptied a bucket of water over him and gave him the coke. 

"Owner's choice—he's being merciful," Uncle Luke said. "Swear, it's sweet how much he likes you. And to show you just how forgiving we are, I've invited a playmate to spend a little time with you. The Owner thinks it'll be a good reminder for you—make you remember you're supposed to be top dog in any situation…well," he chuckled, "except this sitch."

A tall figure stooped through the doorway of the basement cell. Sam's eyes rolled, his breath came fast, short and sharp, his ribcage jumping with the work of breathing. He backed to the rear of the cell, whining out loud no matter how hard he tried to keep it in. The man—not man, _owner—_ followed him, his grin getting wider with each step. "I've been given the right over you tonight. Which means we get to play, all night long, if I want…sounds like fun, don't it?"

Sam's head rolled back and forth, 'no, no,' he mouthed, not breaking training even though he was terrified. His spine pressed uncomfortably hard against the gritty bricks, every place the whip had touched on fire. He blinked and was in the ring again, this time, he was the one begging, burning on the floor— 

 

"Hey! Stay with me, mutt, you don’t want to miss this," it laughed, and made Sam take his pants halfway down and turn to face the wall. Sam closed his eyes and frantically recited, over and over, the ABCs. He could feel the owner sloshing around the edges of Sam's mind, trying to send a slick, cloying tendril of itself inside him but the brand burned into his shoulder blocked it. He felt the pack's distress like cold, choppy water. There was nothing they could do—it was owner business. All they could do was obey. 

When he woke in the morning he was in Iz's cage, wrapped in his blanket. He was wet and bleeding, his body one screaming ache from head to toe. Iz was crying, making the sign for 'okay' and 'question'. _Are you okay, are you okay?_

Sam nodded, _yes, yes, yes…_ he was breathing, he knew his name, he was alone inside, yes, he was okay. 

Uncle Luke let him sleep all day with Israfil, and Iz stayed in dog shape. Sam lay on his belly and rested his head against Iz's warm, furry side. Uncle even let the rest of the pack in with them. He gave Sam full cups of the coke and more food than he'd ever had at one time. Iz told Sam he thought Uncle was scared—that the owner had gone too far, done more than he should have. Maybe. He thought that maybe that was true, because he didn't fight or train for a couple of weeks, and that particular owner never came again.

=+= 

**October 2003**

_Sam picked up a handful of leaves and let them fall again from his hand, enjoying the flash of color as they drifted._  
He trailed the handful as they trooped back inside—breaktime was over and Uncle was hustling them into their cages for the night. It was cold again, promising to get colder, and the moon was a few weeks from full. That meant the werewolf in the separate cell was almost ready to be put in the ring. It also meant moving. Sam could tell even if he hadn't seen the moon was growing. She got more and more short-tempered and mean, and that one hadn't ever been nice at all. She cried in her sleep though, she did that a lot, and more as time grew closer to the big moon. He could hear her knocking against the bars and whimpering. Sometimes it set the pack off and then there'd be no sleep for anyone. She was falling to pieces like the were before her. That was on her. She was welcome to be part of them at any time—it wasn't on them that she kept herself apart.

Sam huffed, breathed the were out of his mind. He shifted on his mattress, pulled his blanket higher. All the cages were filled, the light was out. A crack in one of the shed windows let in a cold and damp wind—it made him miss the warehouse. Sam wondered if the next place they moved to was going to be warm. Maybe it'd be a house again, he liked staying in houses. Cold or warm depended on where they moved to, some states were warmer than others, that's what Uncle Luke said. 

Moving day came and, as always, was hard on everyone. Their cages were stacked one on top of the other, too tight and too close. Sometimes it felt like they were on the road for days before getting a break, the stink of the truck and each other building until any breath he took made him gag. The screech and the roar of shifting metal and the truck engine kept him from sleeping. The low, constant whimpering from Israfil, the wolf's never-ending moaning, set Sam's teeth on edge. He knew they couldn't help it, wrapped up in the silver like they were, so he kept his anger damped—Iz was pack and the wolf was—she was almost as helpless as them. The best thing to do was curl tight as possible and fight for sleep.

=+= 

The pack moved from the parked truck to a big, wide, building. As they shuffled up the driveway, Sam's eyes adjusted to the dark and he saw the building was a big house, with many windows and walls. Much bigger than any house they'd ever seen—almost as big as the warehouse. They went around the back, through a gap in the bushes that Sam saw was a wide gate pushed open. They were let in to the house, and the chain clinked and rang as they stumbled to a stop.

The house was…Sam shivered. It was _beautiful,_ shining with the light of what looked like hundreds of candles. It was wonderful, like a dream. At first, Sam only smelled candles; a faintly sweet scent like honey, a little smoke, Iz behind him, and Zack in front. Then under the good smells crept others: mildew, the damp smell of old, wet wood, blood, rotten meat…he shivered again, pleasure leaching away. Uncle strapped Tami with a belt to get her moving and they all shifted back into movement, the momentary false dream forgotten and business as usual. Uncle and Master Zee marched the pack across the wide floor. The werewolf was still knocked out, chained neck and legs to a cart. Sam saw the tip of her tail twitch and her ribs expand, slow and deep.

The group shuffle-ran from the entrance into a hallway, heavy chains dragging through a few thin drifts of dried leaves scattered here and there. They moved carefully but fast, many years having trained them how to move together quickly when their ankles were chained. The chain ran the length of the line, from collar to collar, and it bounced against Samyaza's chest, twisting the t-shirt he wore. The weight and motion of the chain barely registered with him anymore. What he felt more strongly was cold and hunger, but that was something he'd also become used to—an empty belly before the fight. 

Under his skin it felt like he was full of buzzing, buzzing, millions of little flies with sharp feet crawling under his skin. He was used to this as well—the sick energy of unmixed blood. His prick fattened up, thinking of more of it after the fight, if he won big. Ana ran closer to him on the line, rubbing against him a bit. He grinned at her and she grinned back, chuckled a little when Iz lifted his lip at her. 

After this fight and the next two coming up, they'd move again, be loaded into trucks and sent to some house or camp to recoup and wait for the werewolf to give in to the pull again ...if she survived this evening. Packless made her a target, left her alone. Sam shook his head. She was a stubborn bitch.

Zack coughed, caught Sam's eye when he looked. Rolled his lip up, narrowed his eyes and Sam gave a bare nod. _Werewolf, vampire,_ Zack had told him, his nose being better and Sam being towed under by too many thoughts to tease one out from the other. But now he knew what they'd be fighting this evening, and being prepared always helped. A shudder worked its way down Sam's spine, dispelled in a subtle motion of his shoulders and fingers. Samyaza was careful not to make any outward sign of emotion—Master Zee didn't like it, not before a fight. Not after either.

Sam drew up short. He'd been so deep in his thoughts he almost hadn't heard the handlers call a stop. They were at the foot of a huge stairway. Above them, a second floor stood open, sheets of plastic hung haphazardly where Sam could see. It was the Owner. He was looking down on them. He was looking, Sam felt, right into his eyes and Sam felt the air in his chest turn thick. The Owner smiled down at them and Sam was flooded with a gluey, sticky feeling of excitement. His heart felt like it was trying to beat inside a tightening cage. All the pack dropped their eyes and pulled in their shoulders. The instinct to appear small as possible took them all. Uncle Luke broke the spell by shouting, "Step it up, little soldiers, step it up!" They trotted forward, following the direction Master pointed in. Sam chanced another look but the Owner was gone.

They went up the stairs and were led into the first room—a huge room with icy, tiled floors and walls. At one time, it might have been a shower room, a locker room, but Sam didn’t know that. He could only see that it was a windowless room tiled from floor to ceiling with metal pipes twisted out of the walls like mangled limbs. "Kneel," Uncle shouted, as if they were all deaf, or stupid. Samyaza had done nothing but obey for every day of his life that he could remember. Shuffle-run on the chain from one place to another, kneel to be unlocked. Kneel to be fed, to wash, to serve, kneel every day.

Master Zee came towards them with another man, one he called Master Que. They walked along the line of Sam's pack, everyone kneeling and no one moving, not the slightest shiver. Sam was proud of them. It was always harder when there was a stranger. Master Que warned them that they all had to obey him like they obeyed Master Zee, Uncle Luke, and that anyone who ran would be killed. Sam managed not to roll his eyes. He felt the amusement of the pack. Anyone that stupid had long been dead. Master Que told them that the weres, vamps, and fighters were in another part of the building. That they'd fight them in two days. That they were to bunk down here and cause no trouble. Food was coming. Sam blanked on Master Que's droning, pointless rules. The pack knew the routine in their bones. When they stood and shuffled to their place, Master Zee caught Sam's eyes. Sam almost startled at the wisp of amusement Master felt. It was oddly like…sharing. Sam quickly dropped his eyes. The line shuffled past, business as usual.

They ate, washed in icy water, and then Uncle Luke came for Sam. They didn't head down, like he expected. They crossed another hallway, past a huge empty pit in the floor. Sam stared at the pit and wondered what it was for until he saw humans throwing sawdust on top of the tiles, some setting up the chain-link fencing brought in from the trucks.

Sam dropped his head, the cross-breeze from empty windows chill on his shaved head. Uncle Luke stopped in front of a tall, dark wood door, bright metal handles gleaming from a recent cleaning. He opened the door and pushed Sam in before closing it. 

Sam blinked hard, trying to adjust for the dark. A few candles burned here and there around the room, not doing much; the feeble light eaten up by the dark wooden walls and ceiling of the room. He heard whispering, snatches of soft laughter; something was slithering in the shadows. The smell of mildew, blood, rot, was stronger in the closed room. The was a _snick,_ and a flare of light, more candles flamed into life, and then he saw.

"Samyaza. My Little General…not so little anymore. It's going to be a good night, a good fight. I feel it."

The Owner sat at a table, his hands folded around a stubby glass full of something dark and sharp-smelling. He was smiling at Sam. Around him, in the shadows, were other owners, but only the Owner and two other yellow-eyed owners wore fancy clothes. The others were dressed like trainers but their hot, slippery thoughts and their black eyes gave them away. Those black-eyed ones went rigid when Samyaza went to Kneel, he felt their jagged, clawing thoughts, full of want and bite and tear….

He swallowed a sudden, thick flood of saliva and tried not to move or make a sound. He could only imagine one reason to be locked in a room with owners…too many moons had passed since he'd been a party gift. He was old, he'd thought he was safe from this. Foolish thoughts to have. His heart beat harder, faster; he swallowed bright acid fear and kept still as he could. It would hurt, but it might hurt less if he didn't excite the owners. And afterward, there'd be blood to heal him and get him in fighting shape. Sam was never sure if the feeling he got when he thought of that was excitement or fearful disgust.

The Owner stared at him with a small distracted smile and tugged the neat lapels of his suit even neater. Ice and frozen blood, darkness and low, muffled screaming, that was the feel Sam got from the yellow-eyed ones.

It suddenly occurred to Sam with a rush of deep horror, that maybe he wasn't meant to be a toy this evening. Could he, had he failed in some way? Maybe he'd done something to lose the favor of the Owner. He knew what that meant. It had happened before there was a _pack,_ and one of the kids, Owner-named Gabriel—Sam hadn't had time to learn his old name—was slowly, slowly, made to die. They'd had to watch, and Sam hadn't slept for days afterwards....

Sam hoped with every part of him if this was his end, that it was going to be a fast death.

The Owner emptied his glass and laughed, reading Sam's terror. "Don't worry, Sam, you're good. I just wanted my boys to see you—you being my favorite and all. Stand up."

Sam rose slowly, feeling like his stomach was about to pour out of his middle. He laced his hands over his belly, the feeling was so strong. The yellow-eyed ones spoke together in a language Sam didn't understand, their voices buzzed like burning bees underneath his skull. 

"Good news, boy, you're coming with me tonight —if you make it out of the ring, of course. I'll be _very_ disappointed if you don't," he smiled and Sam wavered, not sure what to do—assure him, smile back, rip his own throat out…"All right, you go let your trainer take you to your…pack," he smiled and the other yellow-eyed owners murmured. They sounded pleased and Owner smiled wider. "Tell him I want you all in the ring now."

Sam moved as quickly as was politely possible, fighting every instinct that told him he needed to turn around, protect his back. He shut the door, and Uncle Luke was right there in the hallway. He looked relieved to see Sam, but Sam wasn't stupid enough to think the relief had anything to do about Sam and his safety. All Sam said was, "The Owner says it's time."

=+= 

They were dropped into the odd lop-sided pit and set to work. The first fight went quickly; just some humans, dirty and sick-smelling, their thoughts either skittering like roaches or glugging like watery oatmeal out of a cup. They gave Sam a stick and took Tamiel's mitts off. Any human that didn't die from a broken neck or the shock of being burned was finished off by Izrafil.

Zack they held back until the rival wolves were loosed, and then all the pack plus their own werewolf were let into the ring. There was a moment of shock when they realized the other wolves weren't a cobbled together pack of strangers but a real pack, mated and tied to each other. Sam heard the dead were's voice saying _"We are one, and we are many…were many_ ….their werewolf howled and Sam was pretty sure she'd just gone a little crazier….

They slipped and scrambled over pieces of human and puddles of blood. Asa and Ana and himself were mostly in the way, and they tried their best to keep aside. Zack had the strength and the resistance to the weres' infectious saliva, Tami had the advantage of being untouchable, and Iz was ferocious in his dog form. But the wolf pack fought like they had one brain and Sam thought that this was the night his pack was going down. 

They weren't completely defenseless; Asal's gift might be useless against the weres in wolf form, but Sam directed Asa to make the weres' handlers think they were losing and give conflicting orders. It wasn't much but it slowed the weres a bit—Ana caught wisps of their futures, that let Sam send Iz and Zack in and out of the fight at the right points in time—

Suddenly the owners were screaming and hellhounds were in the ring, and wolves were exploding left and right. Humans came pouring into the room, but they were different than humans Sam had seen before—they smelled and felt different. Their minds were loud and straight, sharp like knives and focused on one thing—destroy the owners. 

Over the screaming, the shouting, Sam became aware of another sound, one he knew well—the buzzing, crackling sound of owners tossing power. The doors to the fight room blew off and there they were, the Yellow Eyed, covered in blood and with guts hanging from them like broken ropes. 

They were headed for the pit, tearing apart any humans and or hellhounds in their way. The Yellow Eyed ripped through the metal fence, jumped into the pit, reaching for them. Sam heard bones snap and Tamiel collapsed, dead before she hit the floor.

One of the Yellow Eyed jumped into the pit and scooped up Asa, who broke like a stick when the owner threw him over its shoulder— a crack rang out and the owner went down, burning with a strange fire inside. Again a crack rang out and another Yellow Eyed burned. Sam whirled on what was left of his pack, pushed them into the corner behind him. Ana was crying, some future dream breaking her, Zack tried to squirm away, wanting to help keep the dogs off. Sam made Iz change back to boy—a smaller target, easier to hide. Sam pressed his pack behind him with the hot breath of the hellhound in his face. One came too close; Sam brought his fist down on its head and cracked the neck. Sam stuttered with surprise—the thing wasn't a hellhound— _Zack_ could have broken a hellhound's neck but not Sam, he didn't have Zack's strength.

Sam forced himself back to attention, blinked blood and sweat out of his eyes. He had to keep his pack safe, no matter what else, they needed him—he _owed_ them. His eyes pricked, he whipped his head to fling the tears away. Not time, not time…his throat hurt, and he realized he was screaming, "Mine" and "no" at the top of his lungs. Even in the thick of it, the craziness, he felt a lightning stab of worry about shouting…

 

More lights flooded the room, the air was full of screaming, shouting—shrieking owners and the screaming trainers—hot, stinking air pressing down on him. Clawing, ripping, blood-filled thoughts beating at him, pulling him deeper and deeper and then, something cool, pure, _bright_ knifed straight though Sam. His mouth was still twisted in a snarl, his eyes narrowed, but he felt grounded now, aware of Iz behind him and Ana trying to tuck under his arm and Zack pressed against his left side, protecting his pack. It swept him again, a flash of something, a feel of spring leaves and warm water flowing over him and then the feel shattered like glass—hurt like being thrown through a window. Sam howled, fighting for that feeling of life, of safe—

The Owner had him, pinned him to the ground with a foot on his neck. "Well, well, Samyaza, we have distinguished company this evening. Say hello and good bye to Dean Winchester, maybe you'll catch up with him in Hell someday."

Sam wanted to cry—he had no idea what the Owner was saying, what he meant—the Owner laughed and it made the foot on Sam's neck jitter and rubbed his cheek into the bloody sawdust. 

He yelped out loud when the Owner jerked—the Owner howled in shock and pain, and his foot rolled off Sam's neck. Sam instantly tried to scramble away; he smelled burning meat and then blood, he was showered in hot blood—his whole body seized with it—more than he'd ever had ran into his mouth and nose and eyes and it blew him apart inside, it felt like Tami shoving bare hands into him, over and over—his prick went rock-hard, felt good— _too_ good, was going to kill him with good and then it emptied and he was lying in blood and come and the Owner, who'd owned him his whole life, who knew Sam was a killer and wanted him that way, who made him suffer so much but gave Sam incredible pleasure as well…was gone. The empty case of meat and bone fell down and Sam could see that it had eyes the color of water in a storm. Sam was thankful for the blackness when it came.

=+= 

Sam came awake, but kept his eyes closed, waiting to feel out what was happening. The too-loud feelings of his pack blocked his efforts, so he eased his eyes open and felt…crushed. Destroyed. It was all the same—he'd had a dream that it was different, better…safer, but it was just the same.

They were surrounded by trainers and Masters; he knew them by their black clothes and flat, quiet thoughts. There were bars around them. Of course. They'd only been traded from one cell to another. Sam hid his face in his hands and finally let the tears fall. He'd thought…hoped that maybe with the Yellow Eyed dead, they might get away from this life, do…something. Go somewhere not full of pain and blood. But they were still in a cell, still ruled by trainers. Sam didn't know if it was worth it to keep on breathing.

"Top…" _'Top, you okay, right?'_ he felt Zack's fingers move against his back and sighed—managed to work up a smile for Zack. Zack's tension lessened and he dropped to a squat next to Sam. _'They haven't done anything. They dumped us in here and so far, we just been waiting for you to come to.'_ He grinned when Sam cuffed him. Iz jumped up and settled himself between Sam's legs.

_'Not as bad as it looks, truth, Top.'_ Iz nodded. _'I remember humans like this, places like this. They're not going to kill us.'_ "…pretty sure." He grinned and Sam snorted. Iz had a way of getting under Sam's skin, in a good way. He relaxed against the furry warm press of Iz's mind.

Zack turned to Iz. _'They're not bad?'_ He looked to Ana _'are they bad?'_

Ana slid under Sam's arm. She shook her head. _'No, not bad…not good. '_ She shrugged. _'We have to hope for the best.'_

Sam wanted to pin her down—it wasn't like Ana to be so vague and that made him suspicious. Her feel was like muddy water. 

_'Here comes one to look at the freaks.'_ Iz glared at whoever was outside the bars. He pushed himself against Sam, hard, as if to block him. Sam looped an arm around Iz and rubbed his nose against the back of his neck. It was cute, that Iz wanted to protect him…something rolled over his mind, like warm fur against bare skin…not Iz's thoughts. A strange feel, brushing soft through his head, spring leaves and warm water…he knew that feel. He glanced up to see a human— _the_ human, the one who'd killed the Owner. Sam got an impression of leaf-colored eyes looking back, and then he was gone. Sam wanted him back…wanted to thank him for giving them even this much freedom, even if it was just for a moment. Sam would never forget him.

=+= 

They were moved out of the cell, but no one separated them. They let Sam lead what was left of his pack into a bright room filled with tables, nothing else. No hooks on the wall, no chain bolted to the floor …maybe Ana was right and they weren't all bad. Yet.

They moved straight to a wall, with a wall behind them and Zack and himself in front so Iz and Ana would be safe. The humans watched them. They stared, their thoughts jumped all over: curious, worried, sad, disgusted. The humans looked at the blood flaking off them, the dirt, the rags they were in. They didn't understand. Some did, and the sad coming from them made Sam's insides churn. _Stop, stop._

One of the humans came out of the group, eyes on Sam and grinning like a wolf—a clear challenge. Finally, something Sam understood. The human lunged and Sam knew he'd have to take this one out fast and hard—make rank as fast as he could to protect his pack. He dropped, faked weak to coax the human near, then lashed out and felt satisfaction when he heard the pop and felt the bone collapse in his knee. He was down and Sam wasted no time, he sank his teeth in. Better to make a kill straight off than to cripple, he thought. There was no victory, no pleasure in it. More of the same, there would always be more and more of the same until he was dead. Sam ground his teeth tighter, wondered would it be better, could he let go, let Zack take his place, just make it _stop…._

There was noise and his pack yelling and the humans shouting, pain, snap, snap, snap, in his shoulder, his back, and then he was falling into dark again and he hoped, hoped that this time he wouldn't wake up.

=+= 

Samyaza and Israfil watched their other two packmates wander the boundaries of the _compound,_ which as near as Sam could figure out, was another word for prison.

The wind was chill, to Iz anyway; he complained of it, a constant, querulous grumbling on the edge of Sam's awareness. Sam rarely complained of cold, and this little breeze just ruffled his hair and plucked at his new shirt. He smoothed a hand down the too-large denim shirt and smiled a little. It'd been a long time since he'd had a shirt, especially one like this—clean, new, all in one piece. The shoes he wore fit just right; the pants were long enough and not too big. They all had new clothes…there were things to like here, sure, but in the end, it was just another cage like Uncle's, only bigger. 

When he'd first opened his eyes in this place, finding everyone sleeping around him, he'd felt such disappointment. Still alive…but he only allowed himself a moment, before he'd breathed deep, straightened. They needed him. When they woke, it was important that they saw Sam waiting for them, looking out for them. So that's what they'd seen when they opened their eyes; their pack head smiling, arms open.

Sam looked out over the wide yard, the tall fence, the benches set around what was probably supposed to be grass but was mostly dry ground, with patches of weeds struggling to green. He glanced up at the grey sky. They were alive. That was important. It counted.

Iz shivered at his side, so hard his teeth clattered. Sam chuckled and pulled the shaking boy close. Sam wrapped around him, his arms locked over the thin chest, and he tucked the bony skull under his chin—he knew Iz shivered from more than the cold. He was afraid—of course, they were all afraid. The Owner was dead, and Uncle Luke had disappeared somewhere into the human prison, and this place seemed like the last fight for them. The humans here didn't treat the pack badly, but they weren't especially kind, either. There were good things besides warm clothes and good food. Their collars were gone, Iz's silver chain, too. But…Samyaza noticed that Zaqiel and Israfil were kept separate from them more and more often, that Ananiel and he ate at a long table…by themselves. There were a few other fighters from other houses here, but they didn't matter, they weren't pack like Ana or Zack and Iz….

=+= 

Sam could hear Ana crying, low, almost silent, like she had no hope, all through the night. It was wrong to be separated, just like the were had said. It hurt, the hurt clung like claws. This wasn't like losing a packmate in the ring. It was like being endlessly punished for being bad, punishment without relief.

He remembered what Ana had said, the night before the last fight. Something he'd kept to himself.

_"we'll be"_ the word 'apart' she breathed, then made the sign for Asael and Tamiel, mimed breaking something, and rested a finger on her forehead, the sign for dead. _"Asa and Tami will die"._

Ana had been clear; she'd been firm on that outcome. Sam had deferred to her knowledge—had expected the outcome but hoped for better. Sam's ability was in feeling what others thought, not farsight. It wasn't much—Uncle said Sam's ability was in being a natural born leader and that's why the Owner liked him. He'd rather have some practical talent like Zack's ability to throw off the taint of were with the help of silver and salt and the water with something in it that stung. 

What was going to happen to them now, Sam had no idea. He tried to feel out the humans, but it was getting harder and harder to do. Ana was losing her dreams too. They were sick so much, fevers and aches, annoying, constant and growing worse every day. The humans gave them water and medicine, if it got too bad, made them to sleep but it didn't stop. Sometimes he begged for the blood, and the humans looked at him like he was something disgusting….

He wasn't sure how long they'd been in the prison…he thought not too long, maybe two handfuls of days. He'd begun to doubt they had a future. The looks they got from the humans grew icy now; they wore the smell-bad look when they came to feed or walk them. Sam felt their thoughts less, but their feelings were no mystery. They hated the pack. It wouldn't be long, Sam thought, before they decided the pack was too broken for humans, and they'd do what Uncle did with the fighters too broken to be worth fixing. He and Ana walked the yard, alone as always. The other fighters kept their distance because they knew who Ana's and Sam's owner had been—fear of the Yellow-Eyed lingering past their deaths. Sam didn't mind. Those others were nothing but killers. The pack was more. Ana sat on a bench, her hands going to her head. "Oh. No…they're taking Zack," she said, all words aloud and the words aloud scared Sam more than what she'd said…

There was a shout, his name, and Iz was suddenly there, kneeling in the dirt in front of Ana, crying silent tears. Rage bubbled through Sam at the thought that Iz had been punished, but Iz shook his head, signed he was fine. _'Zack is gone. We went to sleep and I woke up, and he's gone.'_

Sam concentrated, searching for even a hint of Zack's cheerful, zig-zagging feel, but there was nothing at all. Ana moaned, a small, helpless noise. She nodded. _'Gone to a different place—they took him.'_ "It will be bad…" she bit her lips, gnawed until they swelled, and a bead of blood sprang up…she closed her eyes and shook her head and refused to speak. 

_'Don’t let them take me too, Samyaza. Don't let them take me.'_

Sam shrugged, shook his head like Ana had. _'I can't stop them, Iz. I have no power over them. I can't make them listen anymore I could make Uncle Luke listen, or make an owner listen. They're the same. No one cares.'_

Iz nodded frantically. _'Yes, yes, it will be more of the same but I'll be alone. Without my packmates, what will I do? They'll take me apart. Please, please don't let them, Samyaza, please.'_ Iz dropped to his knees and pressed his face to Sam's thigh. _'Will you help me, Samyaza, head of our pack?'_

Sam's face crumbled, he wanted to push Iz away, not make this promise, but he understood. It was just…there was no one to help him. He sighed. It was the duty he'd given himself when they made themselves pack. He was bound to that word. "Israfil, _'I will. I promise.'_

_'Now?'_

Ana gasped, and ran for the doors. Iz flinched. _'She's going to stop you?'_

_'No, she just doesn't want to see.'_

The guards walking along the yard watched Ana run curiously but didn't go after her—she had nowhere to run to. Iz shifted, his long lean body wavering and reforming into a golden, thick-furred dog. His yellow eyes gleamed out of a black mask, tracked Sam's movements. Sam scratched his ears, rubbing hard the way Iz liked; he bowled him over and scratched his belly. Iz's tail beat the dust from the yard. He leaped up and chased around the yard, carefully avoiding the guards. The both of them dashed and ran around the yard, rolling each other over, wrestling and growling. Iz threw himself against Sam, long tongue sweeping his face, little whimpers filling Sam's ears, "Shift," Sam said and he shifted back and said, pack mate, and Sam snapped his neck.

He spent two days confined and chained, and on the third day, he was led out of the tiny, dark cell, pushed into a van like the van that had brought them to the prison. He looked back through the little windows in the van watching the prison disappear. He never knew what became of Zack or Ana.

=+= 


	3. Sam&Dean

**2003**

1  
Dean watched them shove the kid who was supposed to be his brother into shotgun, strapping him in like a bag of laundry. He listed sideways in the seat, muscles slack, heavy-limbed and barely conscious. His hands were loosely tied together with zipties. "Vic, damn it dude—what the fuck? What the _fuck?"_ Dean stared through the window at the drooping lump held in place by the seatbelt.

Vic shrugged. "The zips are mostly for his sake. He tends to come to already swinging, but if his hands are tied, he…slows down a bit. He's just scared when he wakes up, is all. He's not…he's not a bad kid, from what I hear."

Dean stared him down—Vic sounded an awful lot like he had when talking about his fucking K-9 unit.

"What happens next for you 'n' him…man, I don't know. No one knows what to do with them. The human ones, I mean. One thing I do know, in the long run, it's going to be okay. You're a tough sonofabitch too, Dean. You're going to make it—the both of you." Vic broke eye contact, glanced down at the snoring kid in the front seat. "You got your brother back, though…right? What's more important than that?" 

"Whatever, dude. Just—" At this point, Dean just wanted to get in the car and drive them both as far away from Kansas as he could. Vic gave Dean a one-armed dude-hug, pressed a bunch of pamphlets in his hand and pulled reluctantly away, leaving Dean alone with the stranger they claimed was his family. He glanced down at the pamphlets in his hand. They looked about useless—how to go about dealing with PTSD, recommendations for therapy—the kind of shit the state shoves at you when they're fucked on what to do and pretty much want to toss the responsibility into the victim's lap. Dean tossed them in the back, where they slid off the seat and onto the floor. Well, fuck that noise, he thought. He'd handle it, one way or another, like a Winchester.

=+= 

The road rumbled under the car's tires, a steady, comfortable hum against flat asphalt—the true rhythm of his life. The drive was a straight run; mindless, boring, the land around them flat as a plate and bare of most anything. Dean didn't mind much, it meant he had a lot of time to look at this stranger, his brother.

The kid was still knocked out, so deep under he was snoring. Dean couldn't help snatching looks at him, trying to see that little Sammy he still had pictured in his mind. The boy was marked up pretty good, with weird tats, and fuck if he wasn't as scarred as Dean. He couldn't be older than…Dean sighed. Like he didn't know exactly how old the boy was. Each and every birthday—all twenty of them—were etched on his soul. He reached slowly across the seat, drew careful fingertips across Sam's scalp. He was warm, warmer than he should be. Probably from the shit they shot him up with before dumping him in the car. Dean's nails bumped over a half-moon scar, long healed, dug in the crown of Sam's roughly-shorn head. It was a terrible job of shaving, looked like the kid had done it himself with a piece of broken bottle in the dark. Another scar twisted down the long length of his oddly delicate neck. Where the collar of his state-issued T-shirt gaped, his shoulder was peppered with small, silvery scars…Dean wondered what made a mark like that. 

Dean drove as he stole glances at his passenger's angular face. Dean could see some John there—the dark hair and the curve of his chin, that was John. Dean tried to see some trace of himself in that sleeping face but couldn't. Maybe the color of the kid's eyes, maybe that little cleft in his chin? "Sam…Sam," he whispered to himself, feeling out the shape and sound of it, the idea of it. 

The road rolled away, and patchy bits of scrub gave way to fields of dried grass, whispering and muttering in the wind of their passing. Dean stared out through the windshield, tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. Ramble On spooled out of the deck, turned low enough that he could still hear Sam's light snoring…the sound was good, somehow it already felt right to him. 

"Sammy, we'll fix it, I promise. We'll make this better." Dean's eyes went to the **S** tattooed under his brother's left eye, a stylized sword, numbers that might be a date, or a code…they came to a stop right above a mole. Dean took his hand off the wheel and carefully laid his finger on the mole. His brother's skin was still too warm, and a little too dry. Dean's finger looked pale compared to the tan of Sam's skin. He traced upwards, across the narrow bridge of his nose, higher over his wide forehead. Dean's eyes went back to the road but his palm flattened out over the curve of Sam's head. Memory told him how wrong the feel of that uneven, hacked-off bristle was. His fingers, his heart, told him that Sam's hair should be long, soft and silky, and that it liked to twine around Dean's fingers. Sam's hair was supposed to smell like Johnson's baby shampoo and little boy.

Evening was coming on and the flat land was giving up its heat; the sun rode a white-hot chariot down to the horizon, painting the clouds orange and red and violet….

Before long the first stars bloomed and the moon made its appearance, and still Sam slept on and Dean just drove and stole look after look, touched when he could. _"Sam"_ ran on an endless loop in his brain.

=+= 

They were eating up road pretty good; they were a couple of hours out from Bobby's when Sam started coming around. He shivered and moaned and rolled mostly upright, banging his head against Dean's shoulder and rebounding off into the passenger side window, right back to where he'd been. Dean huffed a soft laugh—Sam waking up was interesting, certainly active. He was turned towards Dean when his eyes opened, but he didn't appear to be seeing much of anything—he had a glazed, unfocused look. His lips were pink and loose with sleep. He made sticky, smacking sounds as he tried to wake, and Dean had a brief flare of fondness that felt both familiar and foreign at once—like this kind of goofy-sweet waking was normal for Sam, like Dean had been a part of it before. Memory? Like the feeling in his fingers that told him Sam's hair was wrong?

A little string of spit dangled from the corner of Sam's mouth to where his face had been pressed against the seat back.

"Dude, you're wetting my car," Dean murmured, and rubbed the spot away with his thumb. Sam blinked lazily, and smiled a little, sort of loose and kind of goofy, and Dean felt the knot in his chest ease slightly— _I can do this, I'm sure of it._ Sam blinked again, more aware now, and his face tightened. The ghost of little Sammy vanished and Dean felt a pang at the loss of that soft, unfocused…happy look.

Despite what Vic had warned, Sam was strangely calm, even when he looked down at the ties around his on his hands. He hardly seemed to notice they were bound—like waking up hog-tied was a normal occurrence for him. He tried to sign something in that private language the kids had used, huffed softly in frustration when Dean didn’t understand. Dean squinted at his brother. Dean knew the boy could talk. He'd heard him in the pit when everything went haywire, yelling and cursing his damn brains out, so it was obvious there was nothing wrong with his voice or his hearing…a hunch made him say, "Hey, ki—Sam. You can speak to me, it's okay." The kid looked skeptical, so Dean put a little bass in his voice. "Speak aloud." 

His request definitely came out sounding more like a command, and Dean was about to apologize when Sam eyed him uneasily, licked his lips and spoke. "Where am I?" he asked, sitting straighter and looking about. It was practically a whisper but at least he spoke— _could_ speak and Dean was glad of that. 

"In a car with me," Dean laughed softly. "Heading towards South Dakota. You understand?"

Sam looked puzzled but still calm; aftereffects of the drugs, maybe…training, probably. Dean was just grateful he wasn't trying to kick out the window or something. "Car, yes. South…Dakota. A place. A state?" Sam turned his head to look out the window, his fingers moving smoothly, purposefully—when he realized what he was doing he flinched, his fingers curling into a fist, a tide of red sweeping up his neck. 

Dean watched this stranger out of the corner of his eye. This—kid, his brother, wasn't anything like he'd expected. He'd imagined he'd be dealing with someone who was basically a two-footed pit bull, that's what he'd been afraid of. But Sam seemed aware, curious and eager to please. This just might work out, just like Vic said it would. Dean told himself that, swore by that, and kept on driving.

=+= 

It was _him_ …the human…trainer? The one who'd killed the Owner. Sam's heart beat wildly for a moment, settled when the man did nothing but drive. Sam risked glances at him, careful not to draw his attention. Sam found he liked looking at him. He was pretty, like Tami had been. He gave off a good feeling, strong enough that it was fairly easy for Sam to get; again Sam caught the hint of spring leaves from him, and a smooth flow, like slow water. Not jangly and jagged and full of black hooks, like Uncle Luke. He was soothing to sit next to. He didn't seem as though he'd mind questions—besides, Sam knew as long as the man was driving, he wouldn't be able to hit accurately or hard, so he asked, "Samyaza _has been gifted?"_ He made the gift sign and the question sign, but the man just wrinkled his nose and shook his head. A hot bolt of worry stabbed Sam's chest—he'd signed again when the man wanted him to speak aloud. Sam controlled his urge to cringe and froze in his seat, waiting for whatever was coming next.

The man shook his head. "Words, please," he said in a tone that Sam couldn't read, but the man kept his hands on the wheel so Sam steeled himself. He knew his voice was grating, but if this man wanted him to speak, then he better speak. He asked a different question, an easier one, less words. "Who…you?" Out of habit, he still made the question sign against his thigh, but the man didn't seem to notice so Sam relaxed fractionally. 

"Who am I? I'm Dean, Dean Winchester." 

He gave Sam a piercing look as he said his name, like he was waiting for something, some reaction. Sam was confused. He tried to give the Dean man what he thought Dean wanted. "Samyaza," he said and tapped his chest, but of course, that hadn't been what the man wanted at all. Dean's face went still like a mask, his leaf-colored eyes flashing dangerous and dark. The little flecks of color dashed across his face stood out as the rest of the man's face went paler. Sam knew what came next when a test was failed—he dodged backwards, trying to get out of the line of fire. His hands went up instinctively to shield his head. He hissed, cursed himself under his breath. Another mistake. Some owners wanted Sam to defend himself, and some got mad if he did. Maybe he wasn't supposed to give himself a name; it was the trainer's, or the owner's choice, to give him a name. 

What the man did next confused the hell out of Sam. He coaxed Sam's hands down, stroked them like Ana used to stroke Iz when he got too upset. Sam didn't get it at all. Was Dean a trainer? He acted like an owner, but he wasn't. His smell was human, nothing else. That sent a slick, oily tendril of disappointment wiggling through him. This Dean was human, that meant no blood to share. Blood…the humans at the prison spent huge amounts of very boring time telling him that drinking the owner—the _demon_ blood was terribly wrong, like that was something Sam didn't know. They'd acted like the need was something Sam had caused to be instead of it being forced on him, and then grumbling and grudgingly cared for him when he lay screaming and crazy in his own filth for days. After that, he knew that the guards who claimed to be helping him were no different than Uncle and his men. No matter what kind they were or what they promised, humans were all the same and there wasn't much that made them different from demons—what they'd called the owners. Sam wondered when the Dean man would show his true colors.

Dean slowed the car, finally came to a stop at a little building filled with humans, and Sam pressed against the seat back, holding himself very still. Was this another place to fight? The humans running in and out of the little building were smiling, laughing…that was never good. Either Dean wanted him to fight or…this was like one of Uncle Luke's parties. He hadn't done that in a very, very long time, not since he could see easily over the top of Uncle's head… he had no idea what Dean wanted him to do here. Not knowing scared him too much, made it hard to hold the fear in. He locked his eyes on the window and said his ABCs until his breathing went quiet and even again.

Dean's rumbling voice broke in through the drone of _…now I know my ABCs, A-B-C-D-E-A-N, now I know my AB…._. "I'm hungry, you hungry? I'm getting some food—how's burgers sound, with fries, a coke? Good, right?"

Sam had no idea what Dean was talking about but he understood _food, hungry._ He nodded slowly and agreed that food sounded good. Dean snapped, "Put your hands down."

Sam slammed them into his lap and Dean flinched. "I didn't mean it like that—" and Sam's hands flew back up, his throat tightened with a sort of frustrated fear. What did the man _want?_ Why wouldn't he just say?

"No, no, I meant, just—" Dean reached out to Sam and Sam turned to stone, stiffened every muscle to keep from jerking away. Dean cupped Sam's hands in his and lowered them slowly to Sam's lap. "Like this, I meant. Just…relax, okay? Shit—I'm an asshole, damn it. Wait a minute."

He took a small knife out of an inside pocket and Sam closed his eyes. He was not going to beg; he was not going to whine…he just tilted his head back. A sharp tug on his wrists surprised him, made him look down at his hands. The ziptie lay in pieces on his lap. Dean rubbed his thumbs over the red creases on Sam's wrists. They felt warm, firm…almost the same as Iz's hands when they rubbed the knots out of his muscles. It felt nice. "There," Dean said. "We'll go through the drive in; it'd probably be better if we eat in the car until you're, ah, used to, used to…stuff."

Sam nodded because it made Dean relax. He was afraid to tell Dean he still had no idea what he was talking about. The man drove close along one side of the building, stopped and spoke out of the window to what, Sam couldn’t see, then drove on a few feet before slowing to a stop again. He rolled down the car's window and a person in the building opened their own window to give Dean a big bag and a tray with cups stuck in it. 

Dean drove the car farther into the lot, choosing a spot where there were few other cars. He left the engine running, noise coming from the radio, and he settled the tray with the cups between them. A smaller bag of something that smelled good landed in Sam's lap. It smelled as good as the food laid out when Uncle had a meeting and Sam had to be there. Spit flooded his mouth instantly and he swallowed hard—the last few days he hadn't had anything but water at the prison. Before…before Iz, he kept throwing up the food because all his stomach wanted was the blood and wouldn't take anything else. And then he'd had to kill Iz, so they chained him down in his spot, and again—no food. That was okay, it was right to do; he'd been glad to take the pain for that, even if Iz had begged him to do it. 

Dean sighed, ripped open the bag he'd kept and started to eat, making tiny little noises that Sam was sure he wasn't aware of making. Happy noises that made Sam want to smile; he tried not to watch Dean eat, afraid that he would smile. Sam held the bag of food for Dean and hoped very, very hard that there would be leftovers. The man—Dean—held his hand out so Sam gave him his bag. Dean just looked confused. 

"No, I wanted the fries; they're in that bag with your burger. And the coke, one for you, one for me. Everyone likes coke, right?" 

Sam's head swam with relief and hope, but when he took a delicate sip from the cup, it was like having something good dangled in his face and snatched away. It was just sweet, just coke. He closed his eyes and took slow, little sips—to make it last, to cover his disappointment. To trick his belly into thinking that it was more than what it was. 

Dean tapped his arm. "Hey, if you don’t like the burgers, we can get something else. You need to eat, Sam."

Sam swallowed, nudged the bag. _this food, it's_ "…not for me…?"

"Of course it's for you." Dean grabbed the bag, unwrapped a sandwich and pushed it into Sam's hand. "Eat."

Sam gulped and snatched a bite—two, three bites, and it was gone. The food rode in a solid lump down his throat, burned in his stomach like coals. He choked down more coke and opened his mouth wide for the next sandwich in the bag. He didn't get why but he didn't question either, he imagined Dean must get something out of forcing him to eat….

"Sam. Sam…I didn't. Didn't mean for you to force yourself. I want you to want to eat it, to like it."

Dean sounded sad, confused, angry, desperate…Sam stopped chewing and held the sandwich gingerly. He took a deep breath, let it out, prepared to start again, but this time he took a small bite and chewed slowly. Tasted it. A wisp of pleasure twisted through him. The food was very, very good, even better than the prison food; so much better than the food he'd eaten all his life that it was like a dream. He held it up to take another careful bite when Dean hissed and grabbed his wrists. Sam jumped, ready to throw the sandwich down, but Dean asked, "Those are burns—why did they burn your wrists?"

Sam blinked. Dean had his fingers pressed into the thick, glossy ring of scars above the bones of his wrists, scars he'd forgotten all about. Remembering who did that to him produced his version of a smile, a lightning-quick twitch of his lip. "Training. Too slow. Didn't dodge Tami." Sam blinked again, he'd surprised himself. He'd spoken like it was nothing, filling the air with his ugly voice. He risked a glance towards Dean but again, Dean just looked confused. 

"Didn't dodge who?"

"Tamiel," Sam explained. "Her hands were like…touching lightning." Sam shook his head. "When she took the mitts off, we were careful. A good fighter. The owners killed her that last day…she…she was nice." 

Sam concentrated then on his sandwich, keeping some part of himself trained on Dean in case he changed his mind about Sam eating or riding inside the car. Dean just sat there, mouth opened but no words coming. He didn't look angry, so Sam dared speaking again. "The Owner gave new names to all. Tamiel said her old name meant flower. Lily…means flower?"

Dean didn't answer Sam's question, he just turned icy eyes on Sam, the mouth Sam thought looked so soft gone stiff. He asked, "Did everyone get new names?" and his voice…it reminded Sam of the Owner, it made his gut go weak. Sam nodded in reply, too nervous to speak; afraid his voice would go even uglier than normal. Something he'd said was important to his new—his new—owner. Trainer. Dean. Fear made Sam forget and mix up signs and words. "Not for Iz. _No name before._ Zack was Jake, Aniel was Ava. Me—" Sam shrugged. Maybe his name had been different, maybe not, Uncle never said.

Dean's face was like storm clouds, growing darker and darker; he reached suddenly for Sam and Sam yelped, struck his head on the window. He tried to scramble off the seat, dumping food and drink to the floorboards. If he could just Kneel, everything would be better, he could make Dean not be mad. It was too small in the space and he was too damn big, his knees grinding the fries, the meat and the bread into the mat, no place to put his hands. He tried, he truly did, but every way he turned, Dean was in his way, and it was too much and it scared him. He didn’t know what to do—so he bit Dean. Hard.

Later that evening, Sam managed to piece together what happened after the bite. At the time he'd known, as soon as he'd realized that he'd bitten Dean, that he'd ended himself. It was just a matter of short death or long death, and he remembered Gabe and the long death. His breath had gone too shallow and too fast with the memory, until suddenly he'd had no air at all, and everything went black. 

"Panic attack—you passed out." That's how Dean explained it, but Sam wasn't sure that Dean hadn't been the cause of the blackness. He was human and humans weren't supposed to be able to do things like that, but…he still wasn't sure about Dean. When he told Sam what happened, the smooth-water feel of his thoughts had gone choppy and too hard to read; Sam was losing the ability for that anyway…. 

Dean swore he wasn't mad, even though he'd had to clean and bandage the bite. He'd insisted that they stop, book a room because _Sam_ needed rest. And then he'd smiled at Sam and fed Sam again. He told Sam that he could sleep in one of the two beds, and Sam lay down on it. He spread out on the mattress because Dean was watching, wrong as it felt to sprawl like that on a human bed. He kept telling Sam that he wasn't mad and Sam nodded, yes, Dean, I know, Dean, I understand…but he'd had tests like this before and he knew how it went.  
When Dean went to sleep, Sam took the towel that Dean had given him, snuck out of the room. He shut the door quietly and stepped out into the cold night air. He shivered—it hadn't taken him all that long to get used to being in warm places. Still, he took a few minutes to look up at the stars—still there. The moon hung high and bright, the same moon that was shining on Zack and Ana...it made him feel better and worse at once. 

The wolf would never see it again. She'd hated them, spit on Sam when he'd tried to call her pack, but she was pack whether she wanted to believe it or not. Sam had cared. He sighed deep from his belly, and scrubbed the back of his hand against his wet eyes. He twisted the damp towel around his hand and set himself to cleaning the car as best he could. He scrubbed the floorboards until they looked clean of food, feeling better when he was done. He could rest. When he was punished for biting his trainer and for being out by himself, it would just be for _that_ and not for dirtying the car too. Cleaning he was good at, Uncle said so—had always made Sam clean up after himself or after the owners. If he pleased Dean with a good job of cleaning, Dean might be lenient about Sam running away, especially if it was just to the car and back. Sam crept back in the room and stood between the beds, unsettled. Dean had said to take the bed but…Sam sighed. If it was a test, he'd either pass it or fail it, and anyway at least he'd know what the rules were. He curled up on the bed and marveled at how soft it was under him, how warm the blanket was. He was asleep in minutes. 

And once again, Dean surprised and confused Sam by _not_ being pleased about the clean car, not at all. Dean was so strange that he hurt Sam's head and made him say the ABCs in his mind too many times. Dean was what the Owner had once said Sam was—vexing. If the Owner had had time with Dean, he would have been very, _very_ vexed. Sam smiled a little to himself, imagining telling Zack that, and how hard Zack would laugh. A wave of sadness swept over him. The pack was gone, his old life was over, he needed to forget it and concentrate on surviving this new life, full of confusing rules and not-rules.

=+= 

"I would have called you sooner, Pop, but shit jumped off so fast…I'm coming home for a few. I've got a huge problem," Dean said, the phone squeezed between his ear and shoulder as he pumped gas into the Impala's tank. He kept an eye on Sam, who was sitting inside the car, peering out at the gas station like he was in Disneyland.

Bobby sounded skeptical, verging on suspicious. "What kinda problem? I heard the hunt fell out right, so what's going on? This ain't nothing requirin' one of _those_ kinda doctor's visits, is it? 'Cause I know I taught you better'n that."

"What? No! I'll tell you when I get home, okay? It's better if we face-to-face on this. And I'm fine, so don’t worry about that. I'm not an idiot." Bobby chuckled and Dean swore to himself when the old man went to sleep, he was going to shave half his beard off. Jerk. 

"All right, then. Come on home, boy—and don't stop ta eat, I'm cookin'."

Dean clapped his phone shut, in a much better mood now than he'd started off in. He went inside and paid for the gas, picked up some M&Ms and, on impulse and memory, a bag of Swedish Fish for Sam. It was at least entertaining to see Sam try and make sense of the gummy candy, and the look on his face when he finally took a tentative nibble…for one unguarded minute, Sam's face looked like the sun had finally come out.

It was heading towards evening again, the coming winter putting a real chill in the air, but Bobby was waiting on the porch when they rolled up. He stepped forward, favoring his hip. Cold fucked him up pretty good, but here he was, worried and ready for anything Dean needed. It made his chest go tight, and then loose and warm. He grinned at Bobby, and Bobby gave back the smirk that meant a lot of things but tonight meant, _I missed ya, ya idjit._

Dean knew the minute Bobby caught sight of Sam lurking behind him—he went tight all over but he kept on walking out to the car, calm and casual, like Dean brought strays home on the regular. Bobby slung arms around him and squeezed. They pounded each other's back for a second, Bobby giving him a quick extra squeeze before stepping back. He looked up…and up and _up_ at Sam. "Well, well, ain't he a big one. New beau?"

"What? No, damn it! That's…Jesus, Pop, this is going to be impossible to believe but—he's supposed to be Sam. I mean, he _is_ Sam. I didn't believe it myself at first, it's weird as fuck but…it's true. I saw proof. This is my brother."

Bobby shook his head. "That's just not possible, boy. Sam died in that fire…no way he's…" he stopped, took a step forward. "But. I guess…maybe he _does_ favor John a bit, I…I'm. Damn. Really?" 

There was a load of skeptical in his eyes, and Dean got that. He hardly expected Bobby to believe it when he was still having a hard time himself. "Really. He's a really a Winchester. He's family. Sam come back to—to us." Dean put his hand on Sam and Sam leaned into it, eyes wide and staring at Bobby. Dean tightened his grip—Sam's expression said relaxed, but he was tense and quivering under Dean's hand. "Hey, it's okay, Sammy, he's a good guy—the best. This is my pop, Bobby Singer. You can say hello, if you want. Swear, his bark is worse'n his bite."

Sam startled him by doing an odd, bobbing sort of curtsey, so quickly Dean almost wasn't sure he'd seen it, and then the kid froze like a block of ice. Dean took one of his huge hands and pulled a bit. "Hey, Come on, Sam. Let's go get settled, okay? Take a load off, right?" Sam jerked against his grip and then did settle, his shoulders slumping a bit and his eyes firmly on the ground.

"Sounds good…come on in, you…you two." Bobby stepped back and waved Dean and Sam towards the porch, and Dean had to tug Sam a little to get him going. Sam kept his eyes on the ground, stumbling behind Dean and flinching like he'd get kicked if Bobby got too close. Dean decided to take Sam straight to the bedroom, the old one that he'd shared with Sam what felt like a million, million years ago. He was startled by his eyes going hot and wet for a moment. Bobby rubbed Dean's back, then nudged him towards the stairs. "Hey, go drop your shit. We talk about this later, all right?"

=+= 

Dean opened the door and sighed. It'd been a while since he'd been in this room, slept in it. The same old posters his teenaged-self had hung were still on the walls; a confusing mix of tanned swimsuit models, Olympic swimmers, and singers of indeterminate gender with too much eyeliner. How had it taken Bobby, able to puzzle out any monster mystery, so long to twig to the fact that Dean was bi? Dean laughed softly and felt Sam jerk in his grip. _Sam, Jesus, right._ "Okay, so usually guests stay down the hall, but you and I aren't guests, right? I mean—I think—well, we should stay close, y'know? Get to know each other…?"

Sam nodded, but he had that blank look in his eyes that told Dean he really didn't get what Dean was saying—the same look that had been on his face most of the way to Bobby's. Poor shit. Must feel like tap-dancing in a minefield, Dean thought. "Gimme the bags," he said, and stowed them in the bottom shelf of a bookcase that had been his since his first day moving in with Bobby. Pictures of his dad, his pop…school trophies on the top shelf and all his diplomas on the middle shelf—middle school, high school, college, Hunter certificate—and everything sharing space with books. Sam gawked at the shelves; the books seemed to draw him. "Go ahead, look. Touch if you want to."

Sam drew in on himself when Dean said that, shoulders rounding so that he looked smaller. He didn't reach out to the shelf, just stared at the books. Dean went to the bed, taking extra pillows from a cedar chest against the opposite wall. "Sam, you go ahead and lie down for a bit, I gotta talk to Pop." 

Sam went quickly to the bed, kind of crouched uncomfortably on it the same way he had at the motel, looking like he was about to fling himself off of it at any moment. Dean sighed. That was probably the best he could expect until he could convince Sam that he really was safe now, and his life had taken a major, permanent change for the better. "Just…stay here, okay? I'll be back."

Sam nodded jerkily and froze again. Dean looked back when he shut the door. "Jesus." Sam looked like he was waiting for the ax to fall, literally.

=+= 

Bobby had shots and beers set up on the table. He was dragging a spoon around in a huge pot on the stove, big enough to wash a baby in. Like he'd been waiting for a whole squad of hunters besides him and Sam. He grinned at the old man. Just like Caleb—worse than a mother hen. He tried to grab the spoon from Bobby, fending off slaps and curses. "C'mon, I just want a little taste!"

"Sit yer ass down. Ya can wait 'til dinner-time an' eat outta a bowl, like regular folks." They drank to fallen hunters and as always, to John, and then Bobby slammed his bottle down. "Talk, boy.'

"Not that much to tell, Pop." Dean told him all he knew, all he'd seen and Bobby looked like he'd been pulled through a wringer ass-backwards when Dean finally fell silent. 

"Fu-uck."

"Yep."

Bobby got up and stirred the pot, turned off the heat. Pulled a pan of cornbread out of the oven and Dean's eyebrows rose. Home-made cornbread, chili… Bobby must have missed him. Dean felt some guilt at how long it'd been since he was home last. "Grab some bowls, princess, set the table," Bobby said. "SMAC might think you're some kinda big deal, but I don't." He threw a checkered cloth across the old farm table and plopped the pot of chili, a pot of rice and the pan of cornbread down as Dean set the table. It felt so normal that for a brief—very brief—moment Dean forgot about the giant in his bedroom. 

Bobby ladled out chili and said, like they'd never stopped talking about Sam, "So, the feds said 'we wash our hands of this shit' and now it's up to you to turn this fucked up kid back into a human being."

"He's human! He's just been…."

"Fucked up. Dean. This ain't gonna be a walk in the park, not for you, not for him. You know there are places and people who can help that kid—"

 _"Sam,_ god damn it, his name is Sam and besides you, he's the only family I got. I fucking lost him, it's my fault. Pop, this is my chance to make up for that."

Dean stopped to take a breath and Bobby walked away. He came back from the tiny pantry closet with another couple of beers. He set them at his and Dean's place at the table. Pushed back the bill of his ball cap to rub at his forehead. "Son, it ain't your fault, what happened. But you're about one stubborn little shit when you set your mind to somethin' so…you do what you gotta do. You know I'm here if you need me. You and…and Sam."

"Thanks, Pop. I know that, I know I can count on you." Dean dragged a shaking hand through his hair, twisting up the short spikes before huffing out a tense breath. "I'm gonna go get him for dinner, be right back."

=+= 

Sam was still huddled on the bed, looked like he hadn't moved an inch since Dean left. He flicked his eyes towards Dean when he came in. "Come on, Sam, let's get some dinner."

Sam untwisted his death grip from the edge of the blanket. His eyes widened in amazement and Dean was rocked again with one of those…memory flashbacks. Graygreengold lights flickered in his brain and he barely heard Sam's breathy, "More food?' 

He laughed. "Yeah. We like to eat. A lot." 

He grinned at Sam and waited while Sam seemed to think about that. He nodded seriously and said, "That's good."

"Unh, yeah, it is. So come on, we'll get dinner and I'll give you the formal introduction to Bobby Singer, hunter, father, raconteur. Seriously, he's a good guy, you'll like him."

=+= 

Sam eased into the kitchen, struck for moment how warm and filled with good smells it was. A light hanging over a big table lit plates and cups, and a huge pot of something wafting a scent that made his jaws ache and his mouth fill with water. He'd just eaten, not more than a few hours ago and yet, his stomach screamed as if it had been days. The man with the beard was sitting all ready, a big bowl in front of him. Sam recognized rice, he liked it, it was always a nice change from beans. Spread over the rice was chunks of meat, red and thick—its smell tickled Sam's nose. The man with the beard lifted a big chunk of something that was yellow and crumbled and took a bite. It smelled sweet and Sam hoped he'd get some of it. Dean said, "Sam Winchester, meet Bobby Singer."

Bobby Singer nodded, said, "Pleased to meet you, Sam Winchester, sit'cher self down," around a mouthful of food.

Sam had no idea why Dean and Bobby Singer named Sam with part of Dean's name. If he was right and Dean was a trainer, it kind of made sense—maybe that's how they showed ownership here. He hoped they didn't do the tattoos as well, that was something he'd never liked…"Go on, Sam, do as Pop says," and Sam immediately sat where Dean pointed. He had his own bowl and "cornbread—Pop's kinda average at making that," Dean said, but there was a light, teasing note to his voice that made the back of Sam's brain itch. He wanted to take a moment to find out why but the food—the cornbread—he took it up and nipped a neat bite. Sweet and salt and warm burst on his tongue. He moaned at the unexpected flavor. 

"Right?" Dean grinned wider and started to sit. "Oh, wait." He went to the refrigerator and brought back a pitcher. Filled Sam's glass with milk and Sam smiled inside. Milk was something he'd learned to like in prison. He liked it ice-cold, liked the way it coated the inside of his mouth with smooth and cold. Then he took a bite of what Bobby called chili and his mouth exploded. 

"Oh—oh—" Sam's eyes filled, his nose and mouth stung—he chewed frantically and swallowed. When he could, he peered around the table and froze at the identical looks on Bobby and Dean's faces. It felt like a hook twisted in his chest…tests, always tests….

Bobby laughed. "Took you by surprise, looks like. You ain't had this before?" when Sam shook his head no, Bobby laughed again, and the twist in Sam's chest ratcheted a notch tighter. And then Bobby leaned forward and whispered, much too loudly for Dean not to hear, "Dean liked ta have cried first time he had my chili—snot and tears, I'm telling ya."

"Did not!" Dean yelped. "Don’t listen to him Sam, that man's a damn pathological liar."

Bobby laughed again, and Sam started to get that this wasn't a test or a kind of joke. It was more like…pack stuff. When they were free and had moments to be together, and getting together to cry wasted time but getting together to laugh was good. Sam took another bite of the chili, which now that his tongue knew what was coming, was really very good, and chased it with cold milk. He decided that this food was better than the little building food which was better than the prison food… "Hunh." 

Bobby lifted an eyebrow at him and Sam explained, "This is good." And, for the first time in his life, he said thank you and meant it. Things were changing in ways he had nothing to compare to. He had a lot of thinking to do.

2  
The next few days passed slowly and Sam was proven right; there was a lot of thinking to be done, about everything. There was Dean's weird insistence that they were brothers. Day after day, Dean told him that they were family. That they were brothers and shared a father, that Bobby was Dean's father of spirit but their flesh and blood father, the one they shared, had passed on. It went on and on, and Sam got more and more angry. He fought it, tried to wrestle his anger and frustration down like he'd always done but Dean had a way of getting under his skin. Dean seemed to trip switches just by breathing, just by walking and smiling that stupid smile of his, always smiling, always _there_ —"Stop!"

"What?" 

They'd been walking in the metal desert that Bobby called 'the yard', Dean spinning some incomprehensible tale about fishing for invisible fish with hairpins and balls of bread and Dean's little brother Sammy crying because he wasn't getting fish and Sam just—couldn't take one more minute of hearing about this wonderful, amazing, perfect little _shit._ "Just—stop, please. I can't—I'm not. Not him."

"You are—you're Sam, you're my little brother." Dean grabbed his biceps, gripped Sam harder than he thought Dean was able to. Dean gave him a shake. "You're my brother. You don’t remember now, but you will, I know you will."

"No, and I do remember. Why I was the Owner's. I kill things, I like killing things." He smiled at Dean. "I'm good at it, I'm the best."

"No." Dean took a step back. "No, damn it, it was something forced on you—you didn't have a choice about that, Sam."

Sam tilted his head at Dean; saw that Dean really believed that. He just smiled wider, and Dean frowned. "I did. I was born to it—"

"Sam!"

"Killed my family. My brother, my father—I killed them, burned them in their house. I remember…. " 

Dean was shaking his head, his eyes wide and white surrounding the lake-green of his eyes. He was moving his mouth, _not true, not true,_ but the sound didn't come. Sam went on, "Don't know why. I think…I liked my brother. He taught me ABCs. But I killed him." Sam shrugged, careless. "I guess he made me mad—"

Dean made a terrible noise and stormed off to the house. Sam watched him go away. He didn't know how to make him stop, or if he should, so he picked a direction away from the house and started walking. He wandered further into the broken cars, squeezing between the rusty heaps, just wanting to be—away. He wanted to be gone. 

He rounded a corner and two big brown and black dogs shrugged out from under a truck, baring big teeth in wrinkled faces. Sam stopped, surprised by their sudden appearance, but not for long. A familiar hot streak slithered through him, forcing out a smile that was all teeth. He shook himself all over, loosening muscles and getting ready. Sam had fought dogs, he'd fought black dogs and shifter dogs, he'd even helped Zack fight a hellhound once, so he wasn't afraid. Just curious. What did it mean that dogs were here? Was it practice, were they going to fight him soon? Sam growled behind his teeth. He didn’t know _anything_ anymore and it made him crazy, always exhausted, on edge and constantly waiting for an owner to pop the joke. Dean acted crazy, not like a trainer, not like an owner except in the ways he did plus he wanted Sam to believe he was family and, and—

Sam crouched and screamed at the dogs. One turned tail and ran but the other attacked, and Sam felt a vicious wave of pure happiness and rage. They collided, Sam doing his best to keep the dog from setting its teeth in—he shoved his fist into the dog's open mouth and kept shoving in, ignoring the way its teeth scored him. The dog's claws raked him, tearing through his t-shirt and leaving bleeding streaks down Sam's sides as it tried to break free and breathe. Sam used his weight against it, bearing the dog to the ground while twisting his free arm around its neck. Sam's arm ran with blood and his fist was on fire—it was hurt, but he knew from experience he wasn't badly injured, so he ignored the pain the way he'd been taught to. 

With one last hard jerk, he snapped the dog's neck. He heard the bones snap, grind as he twisted the head towards him and the dog went still. Sam wanted to feel triumphant. He waited for that good, warm feeling to flood him, for his skin burn in a good way, just as it had before. Waited for the hot throb to build between his legs, the way it'd press at him, the feeling when he had the right to take whoever had lost to him. Because he was top and it was always good…it _was_ good. The Owner said so. 

Sam dropped the dog and crawled away from it. He didn't feel _any_ of that. He felt cold and sick. His gut ached and he gagged up everything in his stomach. He rolled to his feet and staggered away from the puddle of vomit, tried to wipe his mouth and only smeared blood over his face. There was a dead dog on the ground and his blood, blood everywhere, and his trainer was crazy and thought Sam was his dead brother and Sam had no one…Sam dropped to his knees and howled until Dean found him and dragged him back in the house.

=+= 

Sam crouched on the floor between the beds and tried not to whine with how his hand throbbed. Dean had cleaned him up, and put in a couple of stitches, two or three. Told him in a cold, flat voice that he'd done wrong. Killing the dog was a terrible, terrible wrong. Sam knew that now. The way Bobby had shouted and yelled at Dean, and looked at Sam like…like the guards at the prison had looked at him. Like if he had a stick, he'd put it in Sam's eye. The look Dean gave him, the way his face went the color of milk, the ice in his eyes when he'd seen the dead dog and then Sam covered with blood…Sam took in a shuddery breath and tried to fold himself smaller. He was afraid for himself, and it was hard to keep it all in, but Sam bit his lips, kept to his knees and waited.

When Dean finally came into the room, there was dirt on his hands and clothes. He told Sam to get his ass in the bathroom, and finally having an order to follow was almost a relief. He ran to the bathroom, stripped and knelt on the cold tiled floor with his ass in the air. He hoped that the water wouldn't be freezing. Sam rested his head on crossed arms and resigned himself to whatever came next. His breath drew in and flowed out shakily. Despite the fear, he could barely keep his eyes open, was nearly ready to fall into sleep. He was too tired to keep good stillness; when he shifted, his cheek pulled free of the blood on his arms. That little sting brought him awake and filled him with shame again. 

"Why aren't you in the shower—Sam?" The door opened and he heard a sharp gasp and something thump on the floor. Sam jumped himself and quickly tightened his position. He heard the door slam and the lock click. Heard things tumble about and then Dean was there; face bright red and his eyes not meeting Sam's. He took Sam's arm carefully, avoiding the torn parts, and pulled him to his feet. He turned the knobs in the bathtub and water rushed out of the shower head, but instead of throwing Sam right in, Dean waited until the water was warm before pushing Sam's hands in and asking if it was okay. Sam shuddered with the feel of it, warm as the showers he'd had in the prison, comforting as the lake that summer. He nodded and Dean nudged him under the flow. Handing him soap and a washrag, Dean said, "Go on and clean up, Sam."

Sam's breath hitched around the sharp tangle in his chest; the cough meant to ease it became a hot burst of tears. Dean babbled something senseless and rushed out of the room. Sam cried and ran the soap all over himself, through his blood-tangled hair and under his arms and down his stinging sides and over his torn hands. He was confused and sad, and so tired, and he just didn't _understand._ Sam fell against the wall, pressed his head against the tiles. He shoved both hands over his mouth, trying to stuff the sobs back down his throat; he needed to stop, before…he whirled around at the sound of the door opening. Dean tapped at the shower curtain. "Uhm…Hey. Come out when you're ready. But you know, take your time if you need it." 

Dean sounded a little uncertain but Sam took it as an order anyway. He shut off the water and slid out of the shower to stand dripping on the mat. Dean held out a huge towel, wearing an odd expression on his face. 

"Did your hair too?" Dean asked and Sam nodded. "And behind your ears?" and gave Sam a smile that seemed a bit twisted out of shape, but his eyes were so kind. Sam blinked hard, swallowed against the hot knot in his throat, nodded again and Dean said, "Well, come here," and wrapped as much of Sam as he could in the towel. It felt like—like—full stomachs and packmates wrapped around each other. Like hiding in the straw with all his treasures around him. His breath hitched again and he began to worry…was he going crazy again, like in the prison? Was there something about Dean and Bobby Singer that twisted his brain? 

"This used to be different when you were small," Dean murmured, his mouth right next to Sam's ear. His tone was soft, the touch of the towel gentle. "Less Sam, more towel. Sam…I'm sorry. I don't know what's wrong or right here. I guess I let you try and search it out on your own, so that's on me. And what you did today…you don’t _do_ that anymore, okay? No one is asking you to fight. We don’t want you to fight; you're not here for that." 

At last, Sam thought. This was something he understood. He dropped to his knees and put his hands on Dean like he'd been taught and Dean almost crashed into the tub. His face was so… mixed with outrage and shock that Sam couldn’t stop himself from reaching out to him, and the barest sketch of a laugh creaked out of him. Sam froze, he was so stupid, seconds from fixing things and now he'd thrown his chance away again. Dean had certainly heard him laugh—and then Dean shocked him by smiling, blushing. "So, sometimes I'm not very smooth, you might have noticed…" Dean stopped and sighed, the smile disappearing all too soon. "You're not here for _that_ either, Sam. Especially that." Dean sounded calm, kind…and so tired. Sam studied Dean's face, the way the heat was slowly dying in his eyes, and wondered why Dean lied about not wanting that, but Sam nodded like he believed it. Trying to understand why people did what they did had always been like running in mud to Sam. Dean made him feel that way even more than most.

=+= 

The thing was, nothing changed afterward. He wasn't made to fight the dogs, just like Dean said. He didn't get punished for killing the one dog. Bobby didn't say anything about it either, he only made Sam bring them their food and water. Their _own_ food, like Sam had his own food so he didn't need to share or steal from the dogs. He slept in his own bed, a real bed with sheets and blankets. He helped Dean and Bobby to clean instead of doing it all himself, and learned that when Bobby complained about how he did it, it was supposed to be a pack joke. Nights, they invited him to watch the thing, the _T.V._ with them, but Sam thought it was pointless and stupid and he didn't understand it. They let him go to his spot— _room—_ if he wanted; they let him go unsupervised, unchained, night after night. Warm showers, clean clothes, soft socks, and so much food…

Sam kept thinking about his new life, now he had so much time, and so few rules. He wandered freely around Bobby's place and thought about this new pack, wondering where he fit. Couldn't tell how Bobby ranked by the way he acted. He was…hard to read, sometimes deferring to Dean and to Sam, and sometimes definitely acting like the top. But Dean never really deferred even if it sounded like it, he was very much in control. Dean was young and fit, muscled and strong. But Bobby was old and that meant he'd outlasted a lot of rivals. Sam could only assume that Bobby ranked over him and they both ranked below Dean…so much to think on. And after a while, he realized that Dean wasn't making up situations where Sam had to fail and then be punished—he was forgiven for mistakes, over and over again. Dean wasn't trying to test him. He was not ever going to test him. Sam took that in, digested it and came to the only logical conclusion.

Dean was weak. 

Dean must be bottom rank, and that meant he was practically bait. Sam was justified in topping him. He'd figure out Bobby later, after Sam was top in this place. 

Sam was sitting on the steps of the kitchen porch, enjoying the breeze and planning his next move, when Dean gave it to him. Dean came out on the porch, a small box in his hands. He was just about to set it on the step next to Sam, saying, "This is all we have le—"

Sam knocked him down, and Dean went skittering across the porch, the box showering its contents down the steps. Sam ignored the papers, intent on getting Dean down and keeping him down. Dean was smaller, strong but still weaker than Sam, even though Sam was at the weakest he'd been since he could walk under a table—Sam would have to be careful not to kill him, if possible. They went flying off the stairs into the gravel, and Sam smiled. He was good on uneven surfaces and he already had a feel for Dean's moves. 

They struggled across the yard until Sam set his feet and got a punch in, knocking his elbow into Dean's throat. Dean went loose, long enough for Sam to get a real advantage. He set his teeth in where he landed a bite and ground down until his mouth filled with blood—then realized his mistake. He'd caught Dean in the shoulder and Dean was breathing freely again. He growled and tried to resink his teeth higher into Dean's neck—but before he got a grip, Sam felt a bright shower of pain blow up in his face, his mouth and chin slippery with the hot blood running from his nose. He yowled and punched hard through the pain, heard Dean yell, and there was an answering pain in Sam's ribs and his thigh. Before Sam could use his weight to pin Dean, he was face down in the grass, a knee in his neck and his arm twisted so high up his back he thought it was going to pop out of the socket. A buzz at the edge of his mind grew louder, became Dean shouting at him. 

"—the _matter_ with you?" 

Blood pattered to the ground, dripping from his nose and mouth. Sam was weak. The loss of the Owner's blood had made him no better than bait himself. He was done, useless, and stupid enough to attack Dean, who was the real top after all. Sam sucked in a huge gulp of air and waited for Dean to finish it. When Dean moved his knee, shifted his grip from Sam's arm to the back of his neck and his other hand to the waistband of his pants, Sam instantly spread his legs and tried to relax tight muscle. It hurt less that way. 

What happened next didn't make sense. 

Dean flipped Sam to his back, his hands going to Sam's shoulders. Dean looked wild; his eyes were huge, rimmed with blood from a cut on his forehead. Blood dripped too from a gash in his lower lip. Sam's eyes flitted over him and he felt a small relief that despite the blood, Dean was in good shape. Less punishment—unless Dean was angry at how sloppy the attack was and—

Dean bounced Sam's head off the ground, hard enough to make his sight swim. 

"—fucking shit, I should beat the hell out of you. Ungrateful dick."

Sam stared, mouth open on a shuddering breath. He could smell Dean, wanted to taste him in his mouth, Dean would taste good…Sam licked his lips, wanting more. Dean's eyes went from Sam's lips to Sam's eyes and his heart beat faster—Sam felt it against his own chest. His skin twitched and his belly ached. Dean was strong. Maybe stronger than him. Smarter than him. Sam spread his legs wider and rolled his hips, subtle, slow, and waited.

Dean's eyes turned a deeper green, the pupils shifted, more black than green now, his eyes…Sam felt that heavy weight between his legs, groaned when Dean moved and put pressure where he wanted it most. The air felt too thick in his lungs as he rolled his hips and breathed out. Dean made a low noise and rocked against Sam, and now his prick was hot and heavy and rubbing against the inside of too-tight pants. Sam closed his eyes, wanted to take the pants off—tilted his head back to let his pack leader know he was ready for him. 

_"Shit!"_ Dean jerked away from him, cold air rushing in to chase away the heat, and Sam whimpered a bit—he'd liked that warmth, the feel of Dean hot and hard against his prick. But Dean backed away like he'd seen something bad. He held a hand out, as though to stop Sam, then lifted both hands to wipe the blood off his mouth, ran them over his head. They were shaking and left thin red stripes on his face. Sam found it hard to look away….

Dean stumbled to his feet, his eyes darting between Sam on his back, legs wide, and the scattered papers on the porch stairs. Some of them were splashed with blood, some of them wrinkled or torn. "God damn it, damn it…" Dean muttered. His hands brushed his crotch and he made a face like he'd slipped on guts. He stared at the small papers like they were part of him, then turned a look on Sam like Sam had mauled that part and Sam knew that he'd failed the biggest test of his life. Dean went back inside fast, like a hellhound was on him, leaving Sam still on his back, untouched.

Sam rolled upright and crouched over the papers, gathered them up. They were pictures, some little boys, a man, a woman. He wiped the blood off as best he could and tried to work the wrinkles out. He was setting them on the kitchen table just as Bobby Singer came running into the room. Sam immediately crouched near the table, and Bobby looked at him like he was the worst kind of bad dog. "Oh, Sam," he said and Sam dropped his head. 

Now he knew how low his place was—too low to beat, too low to fuck. He had nothing to say, no way to explain how badly he'd failed. He chanced a look at Bobby, and saw that Bobby knew just what Sam had done. "Sorry," Sam gasped, a small word that meant nothing compared to the depth of Sam's failure. 

"Yeah, I can see that, you poor shit. Let's get this mess cleaned up. I'll talk to Dean."

Sam nodded, sure that Bobby meant they would decide how to punish him. He deferred to Bobby and followed his instruction as best he could. Watched Bobby take the box of pictures to Dean. What happened next would be the pack leader's choice.

=+= 

Dean sat on the bed, the box of photos in his hand. He had no idea what'd happened earlier. Why the fuck would Sam just…attack him out of the blue? And then, fuck, offer himself up like that? No mistake—he'd been ready to be fucked—raped. Dean shuddered all over, his eyes stung. This was what they'd made of Sam by losing him, him and Dad. When they'd assumed Sam had died in that fire…maybe he should have. Because what Sammy lived through must have been worse than dying. He thumbed through the few pictures: Dad, Mom, the house, a couple of pictures of him and Sam, and one picture of Sam that had always been his favorite. Little, three year old Sam peering out from behind Dad's leg, glowering at the camera. Dean smiled, it trembled away into a frown; a drop of blood obscured most of Sam's face. Dean dropped the photo back into the box and sighed. What was he going to do with Sam? How was he going to help him—protect Sam, from—shit. Everything.

Dean ground a fist between his eyebrows and tried to force the twisted mess his thoughts into some kind of sense.

And speaking of Sam, there he was at the door. It was odd, how Dean could so easily see young Sam in his face now, in his eyes. His forehead wrinkled, and Dean recalled in a rush how fear or worry would make that little curl right between Sam's eyes. The stinging in Dean's eyes intensified, he dug his fingers into his eyes and counted down to calm himself. "Come on in, Sam."

Sam sidled into the room, keeping his back to the wall. 

"C'mon, you can come closer." Sam limped closer, closer until he was almost knee to knee with Dean and then dropped into a kneel. It was kind of amazing, how graceful the kid folded. All that long, lanky height flowing to rest in front of him…Dean swallowed. Actually, it was kind of hot….

Sam waited, his head bowed. Silent. Dean had the feeling that Sam would wait there forever if need be. The thought kicked his heart into overdrive, and added fuel to the flames of his guilt…not just his guilt, if he was being honest with himself. He squashed the thought as quickly as he could and concentrated on Sam, waiting... "Hey. Look at me." Dean's voice creaked, his throat gone dry as cotton. Sam's eyes flicked towards his. Dean flicked the hair out of Sam's eyes…so long now. He slid fingers under Sam's chin, lifted. "Hey. Look at me. Why did you do that?"

"Mistake," he muttered. Dean could feel Sam's Adam's apple jerk when he swallowed. "Went out of my place." He fell silent and looking into his eyes, Dean didn't see challenge, he saw terror. Sam probably expected the worst. Dean dropped his hand and Sam's head bowed to his chest. God damn, that thing he'd done, what the fuck kind of meaning did it have for Sam? Hell, was he trying to live by some kind of damn wolf pack politics in Bobby's house? Fuck Vic and his _"family's better than institutions"_ bullshit. What the fuck did Vic know—what the fuck did _he_ know? He couldn't figure out half the time what was going on in Sam's head. Who was going to help him untangle this shit, Bobby? Bobby was sure Dean was nuts.

All he could do was take a shot—he figured he couldn't fuck it up worse than he already had. "Okay..." Dean took a sharp breath. "Remember how I told you, you wouldn't be going in a ring ever again? Well, this is another thing like that—something you will never do again. Because if you do try anything like that again, to me or—or to Bobby, if you even look at him sideways, I will knock your sorry ass into next week, you get me?"

Sam looked somewhat relieved. "Yes, I get you." He could feel Sam relaxing under his hold and that made Dean feel…a little ill. How he was going to convince Sam they were brothers when it seemed like Sam had decided that Dean was the fucking…alpha, top-dog, leader-of-the-pack? And if Sam _did_ see Dean as…what, his alpha? Then, hell, it might be easier if Sam wasn't his brother. 

"Sam…" Dean dug his fist between his eyebrows again and wished he could just grind all the stupid thoughts out of his head. Of course he didn't really wish Sam wasn't his brother—of course not. His stomach rolled with a sick feeling of guilt. He didn't mean it that way. And he kept telling himself that he didn't mean it but Sam. Sam was…he was like the key to a door inside him that Dean hadn't even known was there, a locked and bolted door that let freedom loose when Sam opened it just by being Sam. 

He wondered how he hadn't known, when he'd first seen Sam, that they were connected. Now that he had him, he couldn't imagine life without Sam. In the past, Sam being stolen had left a huge, gaping, bloody hole in their lives. _Nothing_ had ever counted except getting Sammy back. Dad died for it and Dean had lived his whole life around making up for it. Now he had Sammy—but he didn't. What he had was this man, this huge, beautiful…this…person. Sam but not Sam….

Dean ran his fingers through Sam's hair, over and over until Sam sighed and laid his head on Dean's knees. Sam was happy. He was forgiven. Maybe that was all Sam needed to know, Dean thought, all he cared about. Dean was the one with a problem. It wasn't enough to have Sam back, he wanted to know everything about him, learn all there was to know. He wanted teach Sam. He wanted to touch him, and to be touched back. Not sexual, no. Not…Dean sighed. Fuck, inside his own head, he might as well be honest and admit it was, at least a little bit. He needed to have Sam, keep him. Help him. And not forget that Sam could be dangerous. Or, maybe not dangerous exactly, Dean corrected himself. He was unpredictable. Volatile. It was up to Dean to direct it, channel it in good ways now. He could do it. He was pretty sure.

=+= 

Sam didn't mind too much that he was bottom rank. He'd have to start from the beginning, he'd done it before. It was hard—Dean seldom gave him clues. Sometimes Sam got so angry that he broke; he'd challenge Dean from time to time, but carefully, not with teeth or fists.

Dean kept telling him that they were brothers but that was stupid. Sam's brother was dead, but it seemed so important to Dean that Sam believe it too…Sam shrugged. He knew what it was he wanted from Dean. The way Dean smelled, the way he looked at Sam sometimes. His eyes, his mouth, when he smiled. So pretty— it made Sam want to smile too. It made Sam want to touch. When Dean moved, his muscles flowed smooth like deep water. That was Dean to him, deep water. He wanted to sink in it. He wanted to drink it and drown in it…brothers. Sam tilted his head and watched Dean flow around the wreck of a car, doing something Bobby said was important. He followed Dean's movement with his eyes. His hands twitched with wanting to touch him…or knock him down. He was never really sure when it came to Dean—fight and fuck twisted up together in his mind when it was Dean.

Sam's skin twitched and jumped with too much energy. He needed to burn off this excess, this want. Pun, the dog that had run away the day he'd killed the other one, came slinking around the corner of the house and Sam bared his teeth. He could kill this dog easily. But Dean would be mad. He huffed. That was the problem—Dean would be mad about everything Sam wanted to do. Sometimes Sam thought Dean made these problems in his head on purpose. Dean made his head ache. He should…he should….

Sam jumped off the porch steps and went racing out towards the isolated back of the yard. He ran until his heart hammered at his ribs, and then leaped up on a flattened stack of cars, laughed when the stack shifted slightly under his feet. He jumped from one pile to the other, raced up and down the gravel pathways between the wrecks and finally dropped in an exhausted lump. He wriggled himself under a car sitting on slowly rotting tires and finally let the exhaustion pull him under into sleep; the last thing he saw before he went under was Pun, his snout shoved under the car and curious brown eyes peering at him.

=+= 

The air conditioner chugged away and the fan in it rattled slightly, but that wasn't why Sam woke up. The sound in the room was wrong. He'd quickly gotten used to hearing Dean's steady breathing coming from the other bed. He stepped out of his bed and into a squashy lump that turned out to be Dean's jeans and socks from the day. He made a face and sucked his teeth in annoyance. Dean just dropping his things where ever he wanted to, that Sam couldn’t get used to as easily. Dean was…he should take better care of his things. Someone could take them away. Besides, it made the spot messy and that was wrong, your spot should never be messy. Sam huffed impatiently, gathered Dean's things off the floor and put them where they belonged and then went in search of Dean.

He eased out of the room and down the narrow hallway, listening for sounds. He crept down the stairs, padded into the kitchen. Dean was sitting at the table alone. He had a glass in his hand, and a bottle half-full of that bad-smelling stuff in front of him. His mouth curved slightly with a little smile. 

He looked up as Sam came in, like he'd known Sam was standing there all along. "Hey, Sammy…I was just thinking about you."

Sam stood still, uncertain if he should stay or go, but Dean waved him over. "Come in. Sit down."

Sam wanted to balk at the order he felt in the words despite the smile on Dean's face, but quickly walked across the kitchen and sat in a chair facing Dean.

"So, I was thinking…all the thoughts I couldn’t before," Dean said and laughed. "Wouldn't let myself before and now it's okay. You were…" he shook his head and took a drink. "My brother. You _are_ my brother. I missed you all those years, y'know, never stopped missing you."

Sam didn't like that he was making Dean hurt and had no way to fix it. In that moment, he wished so much that he really was Dean's brother, not a freak, a monster only good for killing things. His eyes stung looking at Dean, who looked so happy to be sitting at the table with a freak. At least he could pretend to understand. He dredged up a smile to give Dean.

"You were so…obnoxious," Dean said, chuckling. Sam let the sound roll over him like a warm wave. It was a nice thing. He wished Dean would do it more; he could listen to it for days. 

"Yup. That was you, Sam. Stubborn and cranky. Like a little mule. Kicked like one too. Wouldn't listen to Dad, would barely listen to me. You never had terrible twos because you were a terrible little shit from the get," Dean laughed. Sam felt a ghost of annoyance. If his brother had been so bad, why did Dean miss him so much?

Dean laughed again. He reached across the table and pressed his thumb between Sam's eyebrows, "…there, that thing with your eyes, and jaw…still there." Dean tilted his head, a tear rolled down his cheek. "I heard you calling me for years. Sometimes I'd be on a job; fuckin' nodding off from being so fuckin' tired…I'd hear you call me. _'Dean',_ and I'd wake right up…you were a little shit for sure, but you loved me. Yeah, you did. Wanted to do everything I did. When I started school, boy, you screamed your head off; I was going somewhere you couldn’t go. Had to promise you we'd have our own classes, just you and me."

Sam felt a jolt in his middle like Tami brushing him. Dean sipped at the nasty liquid and went on, unaware of Sam's shock. "You were starting to get good with your ABCs before they…before that happened."

Sam gasped. "Yes, ABCs. I know ABCs."

Dean sat back in his chair and gazed at Sam, a puzzled look crinkling the corners of his eyes. "You what?"

"I know how to ABC," Sam said, nodding his head emphatically. "A-B-C-D-E-A-N. No one knows I can do that. I saved it. For me." He felt very proud until he caught the look on Dean's face. "What? Did I…I said them wrong?" Horrible dismay swept him. He cringed when Dean jumped up, his glass tipping and the smell of the nasty stuff burning Sam's nose. 

"Say them again!"

Sam stammered out, "A-B-C-D-E-A-N—"

Dean scrambled out of his chair and dropped down next to Sam, grabbed his face. His grip was edging on painful but Sam was afraid to pull away. Dean's eyes were like green fire, he shook Sam, and said, "D, E, A, N…spells _Dean._ That's _me—_ you spelled my name. Sam, you spelled my name. I told you— _brothers—_ how would you know that if we weren't—"

Sam looked down on Dean. "But…I don’t have a brother. Anyone. I…they're all dead."

"Sam, damn it—you didn’t do that. _Demons_ did that—stealing kids, stealing them to raise as, fuck—I don't know, some kind of army, who knows? Demons stole you, Azazel burned the house down, like Azazel burned up our mother but you—you didn't. You’re not a killer, you're a victim."

Sam stared down at Dean, and tried to match his words to what he knew of the world. It…it just didn't match. He didn't see where the edges fit together, where he went from killer to prey. But…it would be good. It would be good not to have killed his family. Made him less of a monster. He stared at Dean and wondered, if he said that he really believed they were brothers, would Dean be more inclined to fuck? He smiled down at Dean and heaved a pleased sigh when Dean suddenly hugged him. He rested his chin on Dean's shoulder and sniffed in his good smell, concentrated hard so he could feel a whisper of that smooth, cool, deep water flow over his mind. Dean was so good.

=+= 

Sam tried to stifle an irritated sigh. Dean had been going on about this 'hunting' thing for days. "Sam, this is what we do. Things like the owners—demons, that's what they are, demons. We hunt them. We put them down. We hunt weres and walkers and shifters, we hunt vampires and monsters in the dark and we do it to keep people safe. Do you understand?"

Yes, yes, Sam thought, he _got_ it. They hunted. Instead of fighting in the ring, killing in the lights to the sound of the crowd, they did it alone for…no reason that Sam could see. What was the reward in it? What did Dean get out of it? "Do we kill humans too?" he asked and Dean's eyes went wide, his face pale. Sam winced inside. Why did this have to be so hard?

"No! That's wrong. We never kill humans—unless they're rogue witches or necromancers, or…"

Sam nodded and let Dean rant on. So. Some humans they killed, but he'd better let Dean make the decision. Sam couldn't really see the difference himself. His thoughts wandered again while Dean went on about licenses and registrations and other words that went into Sam's mind and right out again, like an arrow through a skull. He thought about Dean not wanting to kill people. That made him think about Dean being killed—Sam grunted at the sudden, sharp pain in his chest. To lose Dean. It would be terrible—the worst thing that could happen to him. Even Bobby, he thought, rubbing his chest, even that would be bad. Bobby made good food and he was nice. Sam narrowed his eyes, thinking. If he pretended these other humans he wasn't supposed to kill were Dean or Bobby….

"Do you get it now, Sam?"

"Yes, I do," Sam said. And he did, as far as Dean needed to know. Sam waited until Dean was off cursing quietly over a pile of papers and complaining about "government work." He slid out of the kitchen and wandered off into the junk yard. Bobby's new dog and Pun both stared at him, afraid to bark or come closer. Sam knelt in the dirt and held his hands out. He had scraps of bacon that he'd hidden earlier that morning, before he and Dean had the talk. "I'm sorry," he murmured. "Didn't understand before. Here. Take this."

The dogs edged forward, the new one, Biz, coming first. Sam let him snatch the bacon off his palm. Biz swallowed it and whipped his stubby tail in the air. Pun edged forward slow, slow, and took the bacon with the barest nip of teeth. Sam smiled. _I didn’t understand, but now I do._

When Dean came to find him, he was leaning against the wheel of an old truck, Biz's head in his lap and Pun leaning against his foot. Dean stopped, his mouth dropped. "So…you made some friends?"

"Yes," Sam said. "I made friends."

=+= 

Sam leaned on the kitchen sink and stared out the window, watching Dean work. His hips rocked slowly against the cabinet, eyes locked on Dean. Thinking about him, imagining him touching Sam the way he touched the car he was working on. Sure. Firm. Sam licked his lips and imagined himself kneeling in front of Dean, swallowing him like….

"So…Sam. You settling in…better?" Sam was startled to find Bobby was right at his elbow—he moved quietly for an old man. Sam was impressed; it was not that often someone could come ghosting up on him. Sam turned red and dropped his chin to his chest. He mumbled a yes and shifted away, guilt making it hard to meet the man's eyes still. Bobby said he was okay with Sam, but Sam wasn't stupid. Bobby might be willing to ignore that he'd killed Mack, but forgiving him for it was a very different thing. 

Bobby slowly reached past Sam to the faucet, and filled a glass with water. He glanced out the window to where Dean was wiping down his car, the black paint like a mirror under the sun. "Dean, he's pretty happy now. He thinks he's found his brother." He took a sip of water, taking his time, one slow sip, then another. Sam reluctantly turned to face him, curious as to Bobby's point. Bobby put the empty glass on the counter. "But you don’t even know what brother means, do you? Or family, I'm guessing."

Sam gave Bobby an exasperated look and Bobby sighed. "Yeah…I guess Dean been talking about it a lot, but not really spelling out what that all means, hunh? He's so fucking happy now and I hate ta break his bubble."

"Brother means not to hurt…right?" Sam asked. He'd thought about it and that seemed close to what Dean was telling Sam.

Bobby snorted. "Well, yeah, there's that. But brother also means…well, it means blood. Sharing blood with that person, wanting that person to be safe, and if you're lucky, liking that person too. Or people, you know, family. Family's the people that you may not always like but ya can't live without them. If it's good family, they back you up—you're never alone when ya got that."

Sam felt excitement run through him. Yes, _yes,_ of course he understood that. He knew what sharing blood meant, how it made you the same, everyone feeling the same and understanding it. And family…Bobby was talking about pack, which meant that Dean _did_ understand, and that Sam had been right all along. This was his new pack, Dean was his packmate and the head of his pack and that made it right. It meant he was _supposed_ to be here with Bobby and Dean. Simple, Sam thought. It had all been so simple all along, and he didn't know why he hadn't let himself see it before. Brother was just another name for packmate. Sam smiled at Bobby, felt happiness through and through, and Bobby smiled back. 

"I'm guessing you got a better idea about the whole situation now, Sam, judging by them dimples."

Bobby laughed when Sam enthusiastically nodded, hair flying into his eyes, so excited that he didn't bother to scrape it out of the way.

=+= 

It was night, it was warm and his bed was soft, but it wasn't enough. His skin felt too tight. His fingers ached with cold and wanting to touch. He stepped quietly, slowly across the room until he was at Dean's bedside. He stared down at him, his lashes, his soft mouth. He slid fingertips carefully over the short stubble on Dean's jaw. It rasped his skin and sent little tingles dancing in his fingers. He leaned slowly, carefully, closer, so that he could smell the air around Dean, the air he exhaled. Closer, until he was less than a breath away from his mouth and then Dean inhaled, deep and sharp. Their lips brushed, Dean's as soft as Sam imagined, the skin a little sleep-tacky, warm and smooth. Sam held it for as long as he could without breathing, and then inched back and licked his own lips. He inched back farther and farther until he was back in his own bed, his prick hard and aching between his legs. It was…something new, confusing. He'd been hard before, he'd fucked before. It was wanting it so much, needing it—that was new. Dean confused and upset him. But he was Sam's, even more than Iz or Ana or…any of the others had been. Brothers, which meant they were connected, but Dean still pulled away…Sam huffed quietly in frustration, wished he could still feel thoughts, see them the way he used to. Sam shook his head. _Never regret, want, or wish._ He closed his eyes and willed himself to sleep.

=+=

Dean finally moved past the talking about hunting to the training for it. Sam was ready, more than ready, he looked forward to it. This way he could show Dean that he didn't need to be so careful and fearful with Sam. The last thing Sam needed was protection.

The first day of training, they went to a clear space in the yard. Sam shivered when they walked into the place Dean chose—there was chain link on one side of it. For a moment, Sam was stumbling into a ring again. Heard the screams of the owners, got the stink of blood…he stood blinking wildly until the world settled again. "The sun, my eyes," he mumbled when Dean asked him what was wrong. It was okay. He was out of that and hunting wasn't anything like fighting, Sam told himself. 

He took off the shirt that Dean had given him, one with stripes the color of Dean's eyes and shiny white buttons that snapped all down the front, his favorite…Sam froze, his mind stumbling with the wonder of it. He had so many clothes now that he had _favorites…_ He slowly became aware of the quiet in the yard, and Dean was looking at him strangely. 

"If you're done making out with your shirt," he said and cocked his chin towards Sam. Which was when Sam became aware that he was rubbing the soft shirt against his cheek. He blushed, grinned and shrugged. What could he say? It was his favorite. He tossed the shirt onto a table shoved up against the fence. Stretched and Dean coughed, turned a bright red. Sam grinned to himself. He knew what it did to Dean when he showed his body like that. 

Dean moved slowly towards Sam, and Sam was ready to show Dean how this was something he was good at. 

After the third time Dean put him on the ground, Sam was wild with frustration. Anger, embarrassment, and the sheer unfairness of it all made tears stand in his eyes. He was shaking slightly, and his body kept telling him that all he needed was some of the coke and it would be better— _he'd_ be better, he just needed a little bit of the blood. An echo of the blood crawled through him, like tiny hooks under his skin trying to work their way out. Dean slapped him lightly on the cheek, drawing his attention back outside of himself. "Hey, hey, hey—listen to me, it's okay, Sam, it's okay. You just need to…to...get used to a different way. It's not the same, you can't just bang away anymore and count on the—that demon blood—there's nothing that's going to fix you if you get hurt, but time and your own natural healing. I'm gonna teach you how to fight and not get hurt," Dean said. "Well, not so much hurt, anyway."

It was different—Sam found out how different when he began to learn from Dean. It was a whole new world with whole new rules. Dean taught Sam different hand-to-hand styles, and reinforced that not every fight ended in a kill. Dean was satisfied that Sam worked well with knives. He didn't press too hard to see what Sam could do after he found out that he was accurate with a throw and reduced practice dummies to slivers. He was surprised to find out Sam couldn't put an edge on a knife—had no idea how to maintain them, or any of the weapons Sam used. Still, the praise Sam got when he showed Dean what he _could_ do was a thousand times better than any he'd gotten from Uncle. 

Dean taught Sam about guns too, and that was completely new. It was also slow going and boring, so boring he had to fight not to hit Dean so many times. Just the thought of it made Sam smile, because Dean laughed every time Sam wanted to strangle him, like he knew what Sam was thinking and he found it funny. Dean was…he was kind and patient, smart and brave. He was so good to look at and to smell, wonderful to touch. He was also annoying, irritating, bossy, and just wouldn't listen to anyone but himself, and he made Sam do stupid things over and over—

=+=

Sam was hiding from Bobby and Dean. He didn't feel like washing dishes and he didn't feel like loading bags into the car, and they kept saying he needed to learn to make up his own mind, so…here he was, making up his own mind to do nothing. At least until they found him, he thought and grinned. Not so many moons—months—ago, he would have been terrified that Dean would beat him; a few months ago, he'd thought Dean was his trainer. Now he knew better. Now he knew Dean could never hurt him, no more than Sam would have hurt Iz if he hadn't…Sam blinked against the sudden jab of pain. Sam missed him. It hurt, thinking of Israfil—all of them. He chased the pain away with good thoughts of Iz, sleek and smooth and warm against him. Pretty smile, warm hands, thoughts like water over round stones….

It was a good feeling. 

He stretched out across the roof of the shed he was hiding on. He liked being high, he liked being outdoors. The roof was just right—hot, but not hot enough to burn. A little breeze blew his hair in and out of his face—an odd feeling. He'd learned to tolerate what he thought of as an irritating mess because Dean seemed to like it so much…he touched Sam's hair a lot. Sam thought getting hair in his eyes was worth that. He laid his head on his crossed arms and cocked one leg up, letting the heat of the roof soothe him. Heat underneath him and the warm sun on his belly lulled him into sleep; he floated half in and half out of it, sometimes catching glimpses of big birds floating in lazy circles across the sky. He tried to imagine what'd it be like to have wings and fly where you wanted to. He stretched his arms out to the sky and spread them wide…wings. Wings were meant for flying away, and away meant being far from Dean, and that meant nothing good. This was enough: being out, breathing, doing whatever he felt like doing—or not doing—and waiting for Dean. 

He heard a noise in the yard and turned over onto his belly. Dean was walking towards his car, a big bag over his shoulder— Sam made a face, it was the one with the guns in it, he saw, and huffed. Still didn't like them. Yesterday Dean said that they were ready for a hunt and Sam looked forward to it—a ghost, simple, Dean had said, a good beginner's job. 

Dean was fiddling with the trunk—had shucked his shirt off and tucked it into the back of his pants. His arms were bare, they gleamed with sweat. Sam groaned into his crooked arm when Dean stretched like a cat. Muscle rolled under his skin, a beautiful, smooth movement, like blood pouring down glass. Sam licked his lips, moved onto his side and shoved his hand down his pants, cupping his prick—no, dick—Dean said only stuffy Victorian heroines called it a prick. Though why, and what a Victorian heroine was, was a mystery to Sam. He stroked himself, not with any real end in mind; it just felt good to watch Dean and touch himself while he did so. Sam let the sun warm him, his thoughts warm him. Dean was his life. His everything. 

Sam's hand stuttered over his dick and his breath caught—it suddenly hit him, what that meant, _his everything._ Bobby warned him to take care of Dean, watch out for him—he gave Sam a look when he said it and there was no mystery in that look. He meant for Sam to protect Dean from Sam too. Well…Sam hissed and felt precome ooze over his fingers; he played with the wet, and slid his finger through the slick. Sam didn't think he was going to pay any attention to Bobby as far as that went. Dean needed Sam, and there was nothing Sam could do to Dean that would hurt him.

He squeezed a little harder; swept his thumb over and over the wet slit…stroked a little faster and watched his pack leader circle the car. He loved Dean's rolling walk, the curve of his legs. Sam tucked his thumb in his mouth and sucked it clean. Those legs; they should be curved around Sam, pulling him close…"oh…" His eyes narrowed with the good feeling sparking through him. He sucked his tongue and imagined the taste was Dean's—he wrapped his hand over the end of his dick and caught the come spurting out of him with a low, strained moan. Dean stopped. Sam wondered if he'd heard, if he'd look up, and got ready to scoot back out of sight. But he didn't and Sam relaxed. People looked down, looked over their shoulders, and from side to side but they very rarely looked up….

Sam watched him go back to the house. He idly licked his hand clean, tonguing his palm, sucked his fingers until the only thing left on his hand was spit. He sighed, rubbed his hand dry on his leg.

=+=

3  
They left early in the morning, Bobby sending them off with a thermos of coffee and a warning for Dean to watch out for Sam. Dean huffed a lot, but Sam just watched Bobby's eyes, and how they went from Sam, to Dean, and back again. Sam dipped his head, let the hair swing in front of his own eyes, and mask the blush that wanted to rise when Bobby cut his eyes to him. Bobby had experience, he was smart, and saw things sharply. Still, Sam couldn't fault that sharpness—it was part of the reason he was fond of Bobby. He was fairly certain Bobby returned the feeling.

Being in Dean's car was worlds different than being in Uncle Luke's truck. For one thing, Sam found it relaxing, and not just because he was in the front seat instead of locked up in a cramped travel cage in the back. He'd ridden in the front with Uncle too many times for it to ever be any kind of treat or good memory. No, being in Dean's car, this felt…it felt like normal, like a deep down normal. He wondered…if he was Dean's brother, in the way that Dean thought of _brother,_ had he ever been in this car before? He ran fingertips over the dashboard, felt the warm bumpy surface and wondered what it would have been like if he had grown up as Dean's brother. He glanced at Dean and found him staring, the soft look on his face that he got whenever he thought Sam was having some kind of…family memory. Sam sighed. Dean. Always hoping, always wishing to have the impossible. Sam smiled at him and Dean's fond look spread into a smile too, and few minutes later, he was banging on the steering wheel, singing some song he insisted Sam just had to know, and should sing along with…it did feel good, Sam thought.

Along the way, Dean told Sam about the hunt, explained that this hunt they were taking on was one he'd normally pass on to a 'newbie'. It was a _haunting,_ a "basic class one", he called it. "Just the thing to cut your teeth on."

Sam nodded. Teeth. Cut. He got that.

=+=

They were in a motel again. Sam dropped the bags and gazed thoughtfully around the room. Just a few months ago, a room like this had seemed so huge, safe, the bed impossibly big and soft. He shook his head. How had he gotten used to a comfortable life so quickly? He put the bags in the closet and joined Dean, sitting at a table in the corner of the room.

Dean had the laptop open and papers spread out across the tabletop when Sam joined him. "It's not a big deal really, just a basic salt 'n' burn. Tell you the truth, it's _so_ not a big deal that it's just been tagged a 'watch' for years. Someone looks in from time to time, checking that it hasn't escalated. And lately, yeah, there's been a blip or two there, a few sudden spikes in activity, so SMAC sent out alerts…" Dean tapped some keys on the laptop as Sam watched avidly. He couldn't wait to get his hands on that thing…the dancing pictures on it fascinated him. "There." Dean turned the screen towards him. "There he is. Sean Jones. Shop owner. Killed in the course of a robbery, thirty-some years ago, poor bastard. The idiot who shot him didn’t even mean to, accidental discharge—not that it mattered to Sean. He haunts the general area…shop's a coffee place now." Dean shuffled through papers, and held a picture out to Sam. Sam took it, looked at a young girl with bandaged arms and an alarmed expression. There were a few other pictures of other staff, showing various injuries, all sporting stunned expressions on their painfully young faces. 

"So now, an employee of the place gets scalded—after hours, after the coffeemakers are shut down. Someone else almost fucks up their hand, said the knife jumped and turned on them. After that, we get a couple more shady events. So now it looks like quiet, polite, ghost-Sean is shading over into vengeful spirit. Happens a lot, when ghosts get confused, when they start to lose all idea of who they are. Things left over from life—major, like getting iced, say, or minor, like…you parked in my space, can become an all-powerful need to avenge whatever shit they think needs, well, avenging…you know what I mean."

Sam nodded. That made sense. When you were hurting, and had nothing or no one to hang on to, it was easy to give in to the urge to make others hurt too, easy to see it as right.

Dean picked up the keys from the local police, filed papers that registered the hunt and them as the hunters, and then drove to the shop turned café. As they drove towards the café, Dean told him what it was like when his dad was alive and they hunted together, his dad and Bobby; how they would have had to break into the place, sneak around under cover of darkness, risk arrest. He sounded wistful, Sam thought, like he'd missed something good. 

Dean was odd sometimes.

=+=

Dean was shooting round after round of salt, and Sean blew up and reformed crouched over Sam's body. Sam's fingers scrabbled against the old carpet, ached to grab the iron bar Dean had given him, the iron bar that he'd dropped the instant ghost-Sean's icy fingers skated over his skin. Sean's mouth was moving. Sam stopped screaming in his head, and really _looked_ at the thing hovering over his chest. There was something about Sean, his face…Sam watched Sean's mouth. _not me, not me—help the people here. It wants to hurt the people, not me…_

Sam yelled, "Dean, stop shooting!"

"What? Stop what?" He heard Dean shout back and heard the 'ratchet' sound as Dean shoved another shell in the gun.

"It's not the ghost-Sean; it's something else—"

"Something else…?" Dean lowered the gun and the instant he did, Sean wavered and disappeared. The breeze generated by Sean's passing grew into a gale, sweeping Dean up and slamming him into the wall above Sam. Along with the roaring wind, a freezing blast swept the room—anything not fastened down went flying. Music blared out of the little speakers hung in the corners; tables jittered, screeched across the floor, the coffee makers erupted. Fountains of water blew up from the sinks and the little rugs scattered across the marble floors flapped like crazed bats. Sam lay under a stunned Dean and gawped at the chaos.

Just as suddenly as all hell had erupted, it stopped, and Dean wasted no time scrambling up from where he'd dropped to the floor. "Fuck! Probably a damn poltergeist, fuckin' rampant teenage hormones—" Dean grabbed Sam and they dashed for the car.

"We're running away," Sam gasped, and thought that was an excellent idea, was in complete agreement of running when the odds were lousy—it meant you could always double back and hamstring your opponent—

Dean seemed to think Sam was complaining. "No, no—got hex bags in the car. It's still a simple job," he grinned at Sam and Sam laughed back—Dean's grin was full of blood, his teeth stained with it, and Sam grinned and grinned back. Dean was beautiful that way.

Dean rummaged through the trunk and crowed in victory— tossed Sam two fat little bags filled with something smelly, then a hammer and then, a silver knife. "The knife's for the silver content, it'll break the 'geist up, if it attacks. The bags are what's important. We need to get them in the four corners of the building—inside the walls." He was puffing as they ran back up the porch. "Think of the building as a body and the walls as its skin—we need to get the medicine under the skin."

Sam nodded. He'd make sense out of what Dean was saying later, right now it was enough to know that he should run to the first of two rooms on the right side of the café—Dean had the left side—then, break a hole in the wall and stuff the stinking bag in. 

He dashed to the far corner—one strike of the hammer sank it into the wall and Sam stumbled, surprised that it broke that easily. He pulled crumbled drywall and wallpaper aside and crammed the bag in. He sprinted to the next room, only his feet flew out from under him and he went sliding, slamming into a desk covered with files and papers against one side of the room. A cold presence draped itself around him. A small desk lamp smacked into his head, sending stars exploding in his sight. Its trailing cord began to wrap around his throat in freezing coils, tightening until his throat felt like it was on fire. 

Sam was scared, more than he'd ever been at any of Uncle Luke's parties or in any fight ring. His sight went dark, his chest ached and all his worry was for Dean, without anyone to watch out for him if Sam died, who would drown in the guilt of losing his brother again. So Sam fought, wrestling the cord, his elbows knocking against the wall behind him, and—

 _Against the wall—_ He slammed his elbow back against the plaster so hard he felt something give, it took him a moment to realize it was the wall. Hope soared as he pushed the bag in his hand into the wall and the cord drooped around his neck. Sam just got it untangled when he heard Dean from the other side of the house.

It took him a few minutes to reach the other room—he had to fight his way through a blizzard of napkins and plastic glasses, and he tripped at the bizarre sight of Dean doing battle with a chair—chairs—spinning wildly in midair around the room. Cups spun off the counter, airborne and headed for Sam. Dean tossed him a bag, yelling, "Get it in the corner— _fuck!"_ A chair collided with his head, throwing Dean to the ground. 

There was blood, and Sam was torn between Dean and the job. _Do what you're supposed to do_ Luke's voice broke through Sam's worry, ingrained fear made him explode into action. There was a job and he _had_ to do it _or else…_

He was in the corner and kicking a hole in the wall before his brain had quite caught up with him. Sam dropped to his knees and shoved the bag in just as a series of cups and saucers hit the wall where his head had been, like bullets shot from Dean's gun. Sam rolled and crawled towards where Dean was now fighting with something that looked like a wheel made of forks. So far he'd managed to bat it out of stabbing distance with the silver knife, but he looked exhausted—and the forks were getting closer. 

"Dean!" Sam shouted and launched himself to Dean, grabbed him by his belt and pulled him away from the forks. "Last one, Dean, where—?"

"Doorway, back in the doorway, Sam!"

Sam grabbed Dean with both hands and hauled him up and out of the room. They stumbled towards the door, dodging what seemed like every single item in the café—another cord whipped out and caught the back of Sam's hand, opened it like a whip. He hissed and then Dean was kicking him through the doorway, bashing a hole in the wall. The last bag slotted into place just as a fork pinned Dean's hand to the rose-patterned wall—the café rocked with the sound of metal and glass and ceramic smashing together and then—nothing. The total silence stunned both of them.

Sam blinked, his hand dripping blood, his ears ringing; even so, he could hear Dean cursing over the noise in his head. "Goddamn motherfucking fuck!" Dean yanked the fork out of his hand and threw it out onto the porch. 

Sam wiped at the mess of hair sweat-glued to his face, rubbed the blood off and onto his shirt. He asked, "This was…a good job?" and got a puzzled, edging-onto-annoyed, look in return. 

"What?"

"Are you okay?" Sam asked instead.

Dean stared at Sam, blood smeared over his face from a cut across the bridge of his nose and the one on his forehead that had reopened. His cheek already going purple where a chair had clipped him, bruises from cups matched the bruises Sam wore, and he said, "Oh, peachy."

Sam nodded, "Peachy…that means good, right?" and then giggled. Dean cocked his head at him.

"Dude, did you just giggle at my pain?"

Sam shrugged and giggled again, quietly at first, and again, louder. His eyes went wide as Dean gawped at him. Sam was afraid that he'd offended Dean but then Dean laughed too, softly at first, then louder, catching Sam up in it with him, louder still until they were both howling and weaving around the car, entertaining the small audience they'd drawn.

Finally, Dean managed to stop laughing. When the last giggle died down, he took a deep breath. "Woo, okay. Let's go get this job rubber stamped and then take a fuckin' shower or five." He yelled back at the café, "Don’t make me come back here for you, Sean."

Sam laughed again.

=+=

Dean turned the car onto the highway and glanced at Sam. He could hardly believe how different he was now. He kept getting flashes of Sam, the way he'd been just laughing so hard, bent over, arms around his middle and letting loose. It made Dean smile again. Hell, it was worth getting forked to have seen that. And then…Sam had lit up like early Christmas in that sheriff's office. The look he'd given the paper with his registration number on it…so what he was only registered as Dean's assistant, which pretty much boiled down to bag-handler gofer—that wasn't important. What was important was that to Sam, that piece of paper was proof he existed outside of a fight ring. That he had some worth all his own. Dean swallowed hard and found he had to thumb a little plaster dust out of his eyes…yeah.

What the hell was it about Sam that turned Dean into a giant girl? He cleared his throat and glanced at Sam again. Said, "Damn good thinking back there, Sam. How'd you know it wasn't Sean acting up?"

"He told me," Sam said, like it was no big deal.

"Really? Most ghosts don’t speak, y'know, clearly…."

Sam shrugged. "I read his lips. Easy. Used to it."

Dean remembered those kids, silently talking a mile a minute to each other, just an occasional muffled word and grunts and fingers flying…lip reading had to be a part of that, sure. "Well, you kept us from getting skewered. Well, skewered by worse," he said and ruefully glanced down at his hand. 

"We get back, I'll clean that," Sam said. Dean started to protest but Sam said, "I want to help you." And how could Dean resist?

=+=

They showered as soon as they got back to the room, first Sam and then Dean. Dean complained about Barbie-sized towels with the absorbency of bricks; Sam pulled his boxers and t-shirt on and blocked out most of whatever Dean was going on about, nodding at all the points he figured Dean expected a response.

"—and that's why you need a decent towel, Sam, y'know?" Dean sat on the end of one of the beds, and inspected the punctures in his hand. "Hunh. First aid kit's in the bag there, you ever—"

"Yes," Sam interrupted. "We healed fast, but sometimes," he shrugged. "Needed stitches, binding up." He pulled out alcohol and gauze pads and tape and set to work. Dean watched him with a smile. Sam was so serious, it was kind of cute. Or something that sounded manlier, but basically meant the same thing. 

Sam looked up at him and smiled too, and then kissed him carefully in the center of his palm. And that should have made that fond feeling grow—it was so sweet, so gentle—but instead, it made his dick harder than iron and sent a wave of lust through him so hard and fast, he grunted with the sudden, startling weight of it. "Sam—"

=+=

Sam looked up from Dean's hand, startled by the rough, dark tone in Dean's voice. His eyes were black, his mouth soft, open in a small, wet O.

Sam shivered. This was good. Dean wanted him. He could show Dean that they felt the same. Or…show him that Sam could protect him, show him that Sam was strong enough to take care of him….

He shoved Dean back on the bed, fast, before he could move or get away. He tore Dean's boxers down and knocked his legs apart. Sam jumped up on the bed, his knees pinning Dean's thighs so he couldn’t move. He wrenched Dean's t-shirt over his head and behind his back, pinning Dean's arms as well. Dean was shouting, fighting against Sam. Sam was expecting it; Dean was strong, a leader, but he'd understand once Sam made Dean his.

Sam shifted, grabbing Dean's legs and pushing them to his chest. Sam had a tight grip on his thighs, so tight his nails cut into the skin. Dean wouldn't stop squirming, trying to kick at him. Sam frowned. By now, Dean should have stopped fighting and been ready to give Sam his right. He shook Dean hard in warning. Still pushing his legs up and apart, Sam spit on his hole. Wet enough, he thought, this didn't need to last long; he just needed to get inside Dean….

Sam pushed his boxers down one-handed, pulled put his dick, and that one bit of inattention was all Dean needed—he jerked to one side and kicked Sam in in the face when his grip slipped. 

Sam yowled with shock and fell over. The middle of his face pulsed with pain. "What—why are you hitting me?" he complained and Dean looked at him like he was crazy.

"What the fuck was that—no, no, what the _fuck_ was that?" Dean reared off the bed and punched Sam, shouted, "What the fuckin' hell— _why?_ I wanted—" and Dean stopped, his red face going redder, his eyes overflowing. He shook his head, "I can't look at you, damn it. Get away from me."

Sam scrambled backwards until he fell off the end of the bed, his hand still on his burning cheek, his shoulders throbbing from the punches Dean landed. "This is the way it goes. I thought…you wanted!"

"Yeah, okay—not _rape._ Not rape…oh my _god,"_ Dean said and his voice went shrill and high with horror. "Is, was it like that all the time?" He stopped, bared his teeth but it wasn't meant as a challenge, Sam knew, he could tell—it was complete and utter revulsion.

Sam's stomach cramped, went tight and flat inside and he wanted to crawl under the bed and stay there until he died. He wished Dean would hit him again, and keep hitting him until the look went off his face. He nodded, one swift jerk of his head and he pushed away, one eye on Dean waiting for Dean to stop him, to take his right. But Dean jumped off the bed and Sam saw with shame how he was scored with red, hipbones, belly, thighs….

Dean slammed the bathroom door and Sam heard it lock. He sat on the floor, legs spread, his hands between them and waited for Dean to come back out and tell him what was going to happen next. 

"Was it really like that always, Sammy?" Sam jumped—he hadn't heard Dean leave the bathroom. "Because that's…it's kind of bad Sam…god, it's really bad. That's not what sex is about…" Dean looked like he wanted to say something else, but he stopped and took a deep breath, wiped his hand across his mouth. "Sam…did you like that?" He looked embarrassed as he asked, but Sam understood that these were hard questions for Dean.

"I…no. Yes, sometimes. It was…the blood made it right, when you brought a fighter down, the owners…demons I mean, they let you sometimes, it was the right. It happened to me, it happened to others. And the co—blood made it seem like a good thing, like it was the best thing, and you wanted it so much…" Sam shook his head hard and shuddered. "After…" he shrugged, and finally looked up at Dean. "I thought I was supposed to do that. You wanted it. And I thought." His eyes started leaking again; he couldn't hold tears back, as much as he wanted to. His chest felt like it had a grappling hook in it and hurt no matter how he rubbed at it. 

"Listen…you did this to your friends too?"

Sam shook his head. "No. the pack didn't fuck each other. We just…" Sam made a gesture old as time, a swift jerking motion with his hand and Dean snorted like he couldn't help himself. Then he looked thoughtful. 

"Did you like that?" Dean asked.

This time it was easier to answer Dean. "Yes. It was nice. Iz, and Ana…Zack, sometimes Asael, we helped each other feel good. Sleep was better, came easier. Made it warmer too, if it was cold. Sometimes, it just was too cold to even do that." Sam made a face, remembering, and for some reason Dean laughed. Sam felt a brief flare of annoyance before he mentally smacked himself. If Dean could laugh that way, maybe Sam had a chance….

"That's sex, the real thing," Dean said. "You loved each other and wanted to make each other feel good so you were good to each other, and oh my god, I can't believe I'm even having a conversation that includes what a good thing group sex is." He rubbed the back of his neck. 

Sam stared at his feet and asked, "There's no such thing as the right anymore?" He looked up to find Dean's eyes on his. With no trace on a smile on his face, Dean nodded. There was no such thing, and Sam knew it should never happen like that again. "Good, because I didn’t really like it. My prick liked it better than my brain. Do…do you understand?"

Dean sighed and dropped his head back against the edge of the mattress. "God help me, yes, I do. Sam. Come here. Please," he added when Sam wouldn't move. Not that he was afraid of Dean, he was just…disgusted with himself and it felt like if he touched Dean, Dean would be spoiled by him. "Get the fuck over here."

"Okay, yes." He scooted along the floor until he was only separated from Dean by inches, and Dean hauled him in tight the last few inches.

"So…never do that again. But maybe…you were right. About what I was feeling. The thing is, what I was feeling, am feeling…it's so…wrong. It's the kind of thing people would never, ever understand. So much so that it doesn't matter what we feel, it's just wrong. And still…" Dean looked sad, and like he wanted to throw up at the same time. "I know it's hard for you to understand, but there can't be anything between you and me, not like that, there shouldn't be," Dean said. Something in his voice made Sam pull back to look at Dean. He had to nudge Dean's face towards him to meet his eyes. Dean's skin burned to the touch, his face was going that violent red again. Sam leaned against him and when Dean didn't move, he hitched himself around so that his legs were over Dean's and his head was on Dean's chest, being sure his head was tucked under Dean's chin. Dean's arms went around him like he couldn't help it; he pulled Sam in tighter and both of them sighed.

"Ah, Sam," Dean muttered and stroked Sam's head. "I can't even begin to tell you how fucked up this is. I don't know how to explain how fucked up I am, or fuck, even start to explain incest and…stuff. Shit."

"Bobby knows I want you," Sam said, keeping his voice low and small, kept himself from flinching when Dean did. "And I know he thinks it's wrong. He doesn't want to see it, because of the brother word, even though it can’t be wrong because that means pack and we're pack, but Bobby is human which means… _other_ humans won't want to see this, what we have. Am I right?"

"Holy fucking—ye-ah. That's." Dean swallowed so hard Sam could feel it, hear it loud as a shout. "That's pretty much everything right there. I'm kind of impressed. And horrified. You put some thought into this…thing." Dean pushed Sam back, and looked at him, stared at him. "You know, this is like the longest conversation we've had since I found you."

Sam was surprised as well. It had just kind of poured out of him, like his mouth had gone right past his brain and spilled everything it could to keep Dean from running from him. He didn't feel anxious or stupid, or guilty. Dean hadn't told him once to shut up, in fact, he looked pleased. Proud. Sam smiled at him and Dean laughed softly.

"Well, I think we should sleep on this—apart," he said quickly and Sam huffed, feeling a little disappointment. He'd thought that he could show Dean how it was with his pack…that was just the way it was with Dean, though. He'd have to come to Sam on his own, because he wanted to. He'd need the room to think about that. It was always better if all the pieces came together on their own; it settled into the brain deeper, felt more like the right thing. Sam leaned back into Dean, and enjoyed the warmth seeping into his body and heart. The pleasure of it, the complete rightness of it, made Sam smile. He hugged Dean lightly before getting up. "Sleep, no more thinking until tomorrow," he said and walked away.

Dean just nodded. "That's a plan I can get behind."

Sam nodded and slipped into the bed, pulled the covers to his chin and let himself relax. He listened to Dean's waking breath, knowing that he was turning thoughts over and over. He lay in bed awake most of the night listening to Dean sleeping, but it was a good wakefulness and when he did finally drift off, he was smiling.

=+=

Back at Bobby's, things were a little different. Dean seemed tense, fidgety. Sam wasn't sure if it was lingering adrenaline from the hunt or if it was Dean fighting with his feelings, but not long after they'd arrived at Singer Salvage, Dean began talking about packing up, hitting the road. He wanted to be back in his own place, he said. Sam was fascinated by the idea of being in Dean's place, somewhere that was Dean's alone. Sam was sure seeing Dean's house would be like reading a giant book all about Dean. It would tell him more about his pack. His brother.

Plus it would give him time to convince Dean that Sam could be a brother _and_ a packmate and more, if Dean would just unbend that stiff neck a little….

Sam sprawled out on the living room couch, watching Dean and Bobby as they worked in the kitchen. They were back and forth, cooking, talking, drinking the sharp-smelling drink. Dean looked good, just like he always did when he was smiling; his hands flying through the air as he talked, almost like he was talking with them. Sam could imagine it easily, Dean mingling with his pack. He would have fit in well. 

He was content just to watch them as he lingered over the orange juice he'd chosen for himself. The juice was different; it was good, like milk was good, and had no bubbles in it—drinks that bubbled made him want to throw up now. He savored the sweet, tangy taste of it and dreamed about Dean and _his_ taste. Sam squirmed back deeper into the couch's soft cushions and sighed, then pressed his toes against the arm of the couch and stretched. It was a good life now; Sam was sure it would be an even better one when he and Dean were in their place.

Finally Sam felt that Dean was ready. He saw it in Dean's movements, the way it got harder for him to settle. Sam understood that; he'd felt it a little himself, back when his life was about constant change. On the day that Dean declared it was time to move on, Sam had already gathered his stuff together. Dean asked him, "Are you nervous about leaving Bobby's house? I get it if you are. You've just about gotten used to the place and…"

Sam shrugged. "Not nervous." If Dean was ready, Sam was ready.

=+=

They were in Bobby's driveway, Dean loading bags into the trunk and Bobby loading food into the back seat. Sam watched from the side of the driveway where he was kneeling with one arm around Biz's big neck, scrubbing his nails all over Biz's furry chest.

"Yo, Sam, tell your best friend goodbye and get over here."

Sam grinned and gave Biz one last rub, slapping his sides before standing. Pun even let Sam pet him before slinking away. 

Bobby held out a wrapped sandwich to Sam. "Sausage, egg, and cheese on this one, I know what you like, boy. Don’t gobble it all down at once, you'll get a bellyache. Take your time, y'hear?" Bobby stared Sam in the eyes and Sam swallowed. He nodded. "Good," Bobby said. "Good. Remember, it's a big old world out there, and yer gonna meet a lot of people. A lot of people. You just…be good in the meantime and you mind Dean, y'hear? Do what he says," Bobby said sternly and Sam nodded. 

"I will. Do what Dean says." 

Bobby's eyes were still on Sam's, sharp as knives and then his face softened. He held his arms out. "Well, c'mon. Gimme a hug. Ain't gonna see ya for a while. Can't believe I'm sayin' this but I'm gonna miss yer yeti ass."

Sam looked helplessly over Bobby's shoulder at a grinning Dean, his hands fluttering before coming lightly to rest on Bobby's back. "Me too," he managed.

"All right, girls, break it up before you start singin' _Kumbayah_ or something. Sam, mount up—Bobby, we'll be back like bad pennies, can't get rid of us that easy, y'know." 

Bobby and Dean hugged each other. Bobby said something close to Dean's ear and Dean nodded. They pounded each other's back a time or two and then broke apart. Sam wondered if he should he have hit Bobby too but decided no, seemed like it was something personal between the two. 

"Buckle up, Sam," Dean said as he slid into the driver's side of the car and threw it into drive. The car rolled forward, bouncing gently down the uneven driveway and Sam turned his head, watched Bobby waving good-bye from the porch, growing smaller in the rear window. He wondered why Bobby stood on the porch when they weren't coming back. It didn't make sense. Still, there was something about Bobby doing that that was satisfying…a little sad, too. 

Dean glanced at Sam, misunderstood his silence. "My house is pretty decent," Dean said, "you'll like it. It's not anywhere as big as Bobby's, but I think it's comfortable and you can't beat having a lake in your back yard. Figured I needed a home base—s'good to have a place that's just yours. Besides, if I get a chance to retire, I got a lake and a great place to put my feet up and just…fish, y'know? Fishing, Sam. First thing we'll teach ya. It's a great way to pass the time."

Sam nodded. Dean and his stories…Sam smiled at him, feeling a low flush of excitement at finally being able to see Dean's real spot. Place. Sam huffed. Dean's _house._ On a _lake._

"I've had it a long time now. Bought it with my dad's— _our_ dad's—insurance money. SMAC…" he glanced over at Sam. "You probably don’t remember, but when we were little, life was a hand-to-mouth existence. Once SMAC was set up, that meant Hunters got paychecks and medical and…none of that means crap to you, hunh?" Dean chuckled, "Let's just say things are a _lot_ better now."

He beamed at Sam and Sam smiled because Dean was happy, and the way the sun made his green eyes glow was pretty, and Dean's mouth curved in a wonderful way. The radio played music that Dean said was the only decent music in the world…Sam hoped that one day, he'd think so too. As for right now…Sam pressed an ear against the seat back and tried to muffle the sound of Dean's "great music."

=+=

"Let's stop, I need to move my ass before it thinks I've died. You hungry?"

Sam said yes and reached into the back seat for the sandwiches Bobby had sent with them but Dean stopped him. "Nah—I want a hot cup of coffee and hot food. Let's stop up the road, there's a pretty good diner and a gas station 'cross the way."

They walked in to the building that Dean called a 'diner'. The diner was filled with people eating food. Sam glanced at the tables, each one covered with plates full of food. The people ate it, wasted it—he watched them treat the food like it was nothing. Sam blinked. It was a different world now; he had to remind himself over and over just how different. Sam closed his eyes for a moment; he opened them again to a man who was staring at him, a look in his eyes that Sam was all too familiar with. It startled him, freezing him where he stood. For a long minute, Sam forgot that in _this_ new world, nothing mattered except Dean and what Dean wanted. 

"What'sa matter, you lost?" The man smirked. "Or you see somethin' you like?" He licked his lips and Sam's stomach did a queasy slide inside.

Dean was suddenly at Sam's side, hand on his elbow and breaking the hold of bad memories. Dean glanced from Sam's pale face to the man grinning at him. He shot the man a cold glare, said to Sam, "I got us a table, come on." 

Sam glanced back and the man was still staring, smirking. Sam cut his eyes to Dean. Dean didn't look angry, just mostly annoyed. He wasn't moving on the man, so Sam figured that what had happened wasn't important—still, he thought, if he'd been in Dean's place, he would have taken the man down, hard. That look was too filled with challenge to just ignore. Sam sat where Dean pointed out and picked up one of the colorful cards lying on the table. Sam knew he was constantly stumbling over the new rules; the best thing to do was follow his pack leader's cue …even if sometimes it seemed to him that Dean was making a mistake.

A woman appeared at the table in a cloud of grease-sweat-cherry scent and startled Sam out of his thoughts—his fingers twitched towards the dull knife next to his plate before stopping himself. 

"Okay, Sam, you can tell our waitress what you want to eat," Dean said, moving the knife and fork slowly, definitely farther, from Sam's plate. He looked at the woman and gave her a smile that looked painted on. Sam cringed back against his seat. He'd done something wrong—again—and now Dean was trying to draw attention away from his wrongness. Sam folded his hands and held them under the table. Maybe if he didn't move at all….

When he looked up, Dean was looking at him. He wasn't angry, or sad—just patient. He said, "You can just point out what you want, Sammy, or I can choose for—"

"I know what I want," Sam said, angry for a moment. This was normal life. He _knew_ how to behave normal. He didn't need Dean's help. Too much. He glanced at Dean and wondered how he could ask for help without actually asking.

Dean was watching him, his mouth open just a bit, and it slid from a frown into a fond little smile. The woman sighed and Dean shook himself, all business again. Said, "My brother…y'know what, just bring us two number seven's, okay?" and he slapped the card back on the table. 

The waitress narrowed her eyes at Dean, stared at Sam, and seemed to come to some sort of understanding. "Oh—oh," she said, "yeah sure. Whatya wanna drink with that, honey?" she asked Sam, her lips moving carefully, like Sam should try and read them. 

She stopped and looked at Dean, as though he should provide Sam's answer. Dean glared at her before looking back at Sam. "Milk. Right Sam, you want milk?"

Sam glanced at the menu at Dean, at the woman. "Sure," he said, "Yes." There was something else going on here that he was not understanding, but he gave up trying to puzzle it out and soon, the woman brought them plates of food and set them on the table. The food was good, but not as good as Bobby's. There was a lot of it, almost too much but he made sure to eat it all, so Dean didn’t waste money. He even had two glasses of the milk after the woman told him there were free refills and Dean explained what that meant. 

They were waiting to pay at the register when Dean elbowed Sam and pointed to a door off to the side. "That's where the bathroom is," Dean said. "We're not stopping in ten feet so that you can pee, so—go."

Sam stomped off to the bathroom, very annoyed. He'd learned a long time ago how to not pee until it was allowed, and Dean needed to stop treating him like a bait. He slapped his forehead. Baby, damn it, he meant a baby. He peed, and made a face at the Dean in his head, promised himself that Dean would find a way to make it all up to him. He washed his hands and then the door opened. 

"Well, well, tard. Looks like your keeper's gone and left you. Said he don’t want you no more. But, good news—he gave you to us and we're gonna look out for you now."

It was the man with the evil look, the one Dean should have challenged. Sam snorted. Of course he better than to believe the man. Dean would never do that, he _knew_ Dean would never do that…but deep inside, hunched over in a dark part of his brain, was a well-trained part of him that thought maybe Dean _had_ given him away. Or just lent Sam out....

"Come on, we're goin' out the back way." The man twisted his hand in Sam's sleeve and tugged. Sam hesitated. The man was just a human, not a trainer or an owner, no one that Sam had to fear. And Dean wouldn't…Sam went to tug his sleeve out of the man's grip. At Sam's jerk, the man swung back and punched Sam in the temple. Sam's head flew backward and slammed into a stall door. His head rebounded off the doorframe and into another punch. Bright, white spots exploded in his eyes. The ringing in his head almost drowned out the command, "On your knees." 

A trainer…trainer speaking to him, didn't smell like an owner, Sam thought blearily. He tried to drop into a perfect Kneel, but he was disoriented by the buzzing in his head and he swayed instead of holding position. He quickly put his hands on the trainer's thighs like he'd been taught, hoping to distract him. It worked. 

"There you go, knew it. We could tell just looking at that bitch out there he was gettin' somethin' good outta this. The way he looked at you…no one'd drag a retard moose like you along for nothing."

The words flowed over Sam like murky water, just meaningless sounds. The ache in his knees he knew, the ringing in his ears and bright flashes of pain in his head he understood. The man had grabbed a handful of Sam's hair and was twisting it. His scalp screamed, the pain made his eyes flood, but little pain like that was easy to ignore. Sam worked the zipper down and pulled the strange trainer's prick out. He almost choked trying not to yelp when the impatient trainer shoved a thumb into the corner of Sam's mouth and cranked it open. "Well, get to it—show us what y'can do."

Sam swallowed hard, wet his lips…he pushed forward quickly to get past the feeling of choking, kept pushing until the thick pressure against the back of his throat gave way to feeling the head lodge in his throat. The man began snapping his hips, hard and fast. Tears streamed down Sam's face, the struggle for air making his eyes and nose run. He felt light-headed, which made him make a terrible mistake. He swayed and the movement made him pull off for a second. The man hit him, of course, but Sam was ready for it and steadied himself again, shifting quickly under the cover of the blow and relieving some of the pressure from his knees. "Be careful, damn it," the trainer growled.

Sam took great, heaving breaths of air, and quickly scrubbed his hand over his face, smearing wetness and mucus across his cheeks. He smiled at the man, because most of the time that was what they wanted, they wanted Sam to pretend he liked it a lot….

The door opened quietly. Sam heard someone enter, another trainer maybe. He smiled wider because he'd ignored the trainer in front of him and that was bad, that meant Uncle Luke would punish him, and he hated punishment. "Please," he said, and suddenly the trainer in front of him gurgled and jerked out of Sam's grip, dropped to his knees and crumbled flat to the floor. Sam instantly clasped his hands over his head and tried to curl himself in tight so that his soft parts were hidden behind his ribs and spine.

It wasn't a trainer who walked in, it was Dean; an angry, frightening Dean who grabbed Sam by the arm, yanking him up off his knees before throwing him into the wall. Dean planted his hand in the middle of Sam's chest and shoved. He snarled, "Don't move."

Sam froze against the cold wall as Dean straddled the man on the floor, hitting him—Sam saw the skin on Dean's knuckles break and the man's blood fly, droplets spattering the white tile and running down in thin streaks. Dean was cursing, slamming his fist into the man's face, his gut. Sam held himself against the tiles and shook. He didn’t know what was happening, but it was bad. He should run, find some place to hide, but it was probably safer not to move. Besides, Dean wasn't going to kill him, Sam knew that. The trainer had done wrong, not Sam. Sam tried to squeeze himself smaller at that bad thought, a thought that went against all of his training. No trainer _ever_ did wrong. Sam must have failed, he'd tried to do exactly what Dean wanted him to do, but obviously he'd done something wrong and now this was happening. Sam moaned…he was making mistake after mistake. This soft life had ruined him, had made Sam think he was something he wasn't. Made him think he deserved better . . . that he was better.  
Stupid.

When Dean turned to him, he wanted to kneel, but he stopped himself at the look on Dean's face. He waited, eyes locked on Dean's and lungs squeezing shut. _Dean wasn't going to kill him, he wasn't going to kill him, he wasn't going to…._

"Come on," Dean snarled. 

Dean tugged him out of the bathroom and they left the diner at a run, bursting through a door that led to an alley stinking of rancid dumpsters. Sam followed on Dean's heels, close but not too close. Sam wheezed, trying to breathe through the tight bands crushing his chest. Dean wouldn't look at Sam, just pushed him into the car and drove off with his hands strangling the steering wheel. Sam pushed himself into the door, trying to make himself invisible. Suddenly Dean slammed his fist into the dashboard, cursing so loudly that Sam's ears rang. 

"Fucking—god damn shit!" He shook his already damaged hand, blood flying, and Sam jerked when a few hot drops splattered his cheek.

"How could…you were…" Dean made a disgusted noise. _"Smiling."_ He fell silent again and drove faster while Sam held on to the edge of the seat and tried hard not to move. Or to breathe too loud, or do anything to draw attention to himself. Sam stared out of the side window and tried to keep his mind blank. It had worked for him in the past, but he was finding getting into that perfect, empty place in his mind was much harder than it used to be. He kept tripping over images of Dean.

All the joy and sense of adventure they'd started this trip with was gone. It was Sam's fault, he'd done this; somehow he'd ruined this. But how? He'd done just what he was supposed to…Sam's wildly racing thoughts crashed to a stop. Had he? He glanced over at Dean, afraid to see fury on his face, but Dean just looked like he had when Sam first came to live with him, so tired, sad…. 

If he wanted being with Dean to be a good thing, then he had to know where he failed. Sam bit his lip. He'd have to ask questions—and maybe Dean would give him a chance to explain. 

"Can…can I speak?" Sam asked, trying to force his voice loud enough to be heard over the music and the roar of the engine. It hurt, felt like his throat was coated in sand. Dean hesitated for a long minute, refusing to look at Sam, but finally, he gave a sharp nod. Sam went on, asked, "What happened? Why are you angry? I did what you wanted. The trainer told me that you gave me…that you wanted me to…"

Dean turned eyes like green fire on Sam. "Trainer, _what_ trainer, what are you talking about?" he growled.

Sam blinked and blinked; his mouth opened, but the words weren't there. A growing feeling of horror chilled him. "Trainer. The…ones who show us what to do, make us fit for the owners."

"You…you think that I'd have anything to do with _demons?_ In _any_ kinda way?"

The car slewed to the side of the road, dirt and rocks bouncing off the undercarriage, but Dean completely ignored it. They slammed to a stop and Dean shut the car off, his head dropping to the steering wheel. He was quiet, not moving.

It felt like the world had opened under Sam's feet and he was being sucked into an endless black pit. He was so _stupid._ It should have been obvious. Dean had killed the Owner and set Sam free…why would he throw Sam back? Dean was a hunter; more than that, a hunter whose family had been killed by demons. There was no reason, no way that Dean would ever work with demons.

Dean lifted his head, and said quietly, "I couldn't—I wouldn’t make you do that, wouldn’t ask you to do that with anyone, _ever._ I—I don’t understand how you could think for one minute that I would." Dean's voice shook, like he was on the verge of tears. It was too much for Sam, he couldn’t understand. He heard the words but piecing them together…he couldn’t make them fit, they made no sense. So he hid; he closed all the doors inside himself and hid. He gave Dean the words he knew Dean wanted to hear. 

"I know understand that now," Sam said. "I made a mistake. You would never ask. You would never work with demons. You would never make me do that." Sam waited for Dean to relax and if not forgive Sam, then punish him so they could get past this. Sam was beginning to hurt from trying to keep all the bad feeling in. 

_"No_ Sam, damn it—that's not what I want from you. Don’t just parrot back a buncha words to me. Listen to me. You are…you're my brother. You're my…I want you to be happy, to feel safe. To _know_ I wouldn’t hurt you." He stared at Sam, and Sam nodded. He knew that, he should have known that.

"Sam." Dean scrubbed his hands over his face, his hair. He looked torn apart, like at the end of a really bad fight and the whole pack was hurting and there was no way to make it better. "You're mine," Dean said, "you belong to me, you’re _mine_ and I won't ever fuckin' share. I got you back, and nothing and no one will take you from me again, you hear? Do you understand that?" Dean asked and gripped the back of Sam's neck, hard. He squeezed. _"Do you?"_

And that Sam understood. He relaxed inside. He felt as light as feathers in the wind. Yes. Only Dean's. He reached out and rested his hand over Dean's heart, felt the steady, heavy beat of it. "Yes."

"Okay then," Dean said. "Okay." He put the car back into drive and eased back out to the road. "I'm gonna tell you that every day, until you believe it deep down inside. You're my partner," he said and blushed for some reason. Sam tilted his head and watched the wash of red flush Dean's cheeks and spread to his neck. He liked it. Wondered just how far down that red flush went…

"Jesus. You’re thinking dirty things, aren’t you?"

Sam shook his head and did his best to look as if he'd been thinking about nothing, but judging by Dean's snort, he hadn’t done a good job of it. He tried to muffle a soft laugh behind his hand, but Dean heard him anyway, and Sam was rewarded by Dean's smile.

=+=

It was early evening when they pulled up in front of what Dean declared to be home. Dean barely turned the key to shut off the car before he had his door open, sliding out to stretch, arms wide, in the driveway. He waved Sam over to him. "Don’t worry about the bags," he said, "We'll get them later. I just wanna get inside and take a piss."

Sam climbed out of the car and carefully shut the door, his eyes on Dean's house as he moved. It didn't look anything like the house Uncle had had for them, that year at the lake. Sam realized he'd been expecting that it would. 

There was a faint smell of lake water, cut grass and fresh overturned soil, a smell that sent shivers down his back. He was relieved to see that the smell came from narrow strips of raw dirt on either side of the house's doorway. The house looked neat, clean—it was a crisp sky blue, and there were white borders around the windows. There was a small porch, just room enough for some chairs and a tiny table. There was a pot of flowers on the table and that surprised Sam. Dean and flowers. It just didn't fit with what he knew about Dean. 

Dean ran up the porch, turned to smile at Sam before he unlocked the front door and pushed it wide. He walked inside with a pleased sigh. But Sam stalled on the top porch step, eyes on the front door. Looking into the doorway was like looking into a tunnel, and some part of his mind told him that going through that door would hurt him, would throw him into an endless free-fall....

He shivered again, so hard that Dean noticed and came back for him, took him by the hand and led him across the porch. "Cmon, Sam, let's get you in the house, you don't look so good."

Sam followed behind Dean slowly, reluctant to go into Dean's house and not understanding why. He stopped on the threshold and was hit with a deep, confusing sense of longing and being lost. His feet felt too heavy to move. He peered into the house…Dean was walking around, opening windows, and talking all the while. "There's a guy—Will—and his kid, a few houses over, they take care of the place for me. It's like a business, I guess? Caretakers? Anyway, they make sure stuff's in order when I'm on the job. Keep the place clean; make sure pipes don’t freeze in the winter." He walked into the kitchen as he said that and Sam made himself step into the house, watched Dean open the taps at the sink. He said, "Always good to let the water run a bit when I've been gone awhile…" 

Water rushed into the steel sink with a gurgle, like blood draining out of a sliced throat. Sam blinked—the world went black, opened his eyes and it was too bright—his breath hitched. He knew this; he'd been here before…he'd watched Dean do this before. 

No…not Dean…. 

Dean pulled open the fridge door and Sam caught a faint scent of lemons. "Hell yeah, Will actually got decent beer this time." He winked at Sam, and moved to the cabinets near a stove and opened them, one by one. He hummed in approval, said, "Okay, Sammy, we're all stocked up—heh. Will's kid always sticks a box of Lucky Charms in the cabinet, he's a real comedian. In his own mind." 

Dean turned to Sam with the box, grinning, totally unaware that Sam was shattering. Sam nodded because Dean expected some response…couldn't take his eyes from the box in Dean's hand. Kept seeing the vague shape of a man with a little boy, holding the same box. 

Everything went soft and crumbly around the edges. This thing, whatever it was, it was too much. It took up too much space in his head and made the hazy pictures go dark. He was so sad—it pulled at him like hooks, hurt like someone was ripping his heart in two and he didn't understand what it had to do with Dean and his house but it _did._

"Hey, you okay?" Dean dropped the box, grabbed Sam by the arms. "Hey, Sam, Jesus, Sammy, you okay?'

"I—I'm okay." Sam pushed Dean away, he needed space to breathe. 'I'm okay, I'm okay."

"You're really not, Sammy, lemme see." He swept Sam's hair out of his face. "Hey, come here," he said and pulled Sam back into a hug, coaxed Sam to rest his head on Dean's shoulder. "You remember what I said, right, about you belonging to me? This is our place. We're gonna be fine here, you're gonna be happy here, I feel it."

Sam lifted his head and stared around at the room they stood in. That odd, doubled good-bad feeling swept over him in waves. He was aware of Dean, the solid feel of him against his own body and suddenly he needed to be closer, to climb right inside him—he _needed_ Dean like he'd never needed anyone or anything before.

"Dean," Sam said aloud, without meaning to. "Dean, Dean, Dean—" 

He couldn't stop; it was like something in him broke and hurt so much breaking that only Dean could keep him from flying apart. He was filled with something thick and black, he coughed it up and it became jagged sharp edges that tore at his insides as it came up and made his eyes bleed…no, made his eyes water. Dean patted him all over, rubbed his back and shoulders, held Sam's face between his hands and kissed him with tiny little kisses all over his face, his mouth, his cheeks, his eyelids. "Sam, Sam, no, no don't cry, it's all right, I swear it is, gonna get better, please Sammy, I promise—"

More of the broken pieces dissolved and poured out of him. Sam held on to Dean tight as possible and cried until he just couldn't anymore. 

Dean dragged Sam to a bedroom, Dean's room, made him sit down on the bed. "Sam, hang on," Dean muttered when Sam clawed at him, begged him not to go—Dean kicked off his boots, got out of his jeans and over-shirt until he was standing there in just a tee and boxers. He helped Sam undress, and then Sam was down to his underwear and shaking, gooseflesh pebbling his skin and his teeth chattering so hard he could barely hear what Dean was telling him. "Less clothing, Sam, skin to skin…it helps…." Dean touched him and suddenly Sam realized he was freezing and he was shaking because of the cold. 

Warmth slowly seeped into him, the heat coming from Dean and the weight of solid muscle pressing Sam into the mattress felt so good he moaned…Dean said, "Gotcha, gotcha," and pulled him into a hug, practically rolled Sam on top of him and Sam clung to him like he was a rock—the only thing keeping Sam's head above storm-racked water. 

"Shh. It's okay, it's okay," Dean said it over and over. His voice was soft and sweet, almost like Dean was singing, and finally, _finally,_ Sam let go. He was asleep before he knew it.

=+=

Dean woke up with a warm weight snugged up against his side. He squirmed back against it, sighing with content. Caleb must have showed up in the night—good. What with Director Waller wanting him on the road to Kansas in the morning, it'd be a relief to have a reliable partner at his back…wait. Dean blinked. _That already happened, what...._

In a rush, the evening's events came back. He still wasn't sure what was going on with Sam, but _he_ sure felt lighter, lighter than he'd felt since Vic had shoved a mostly unconscious kid into the front seat of the Impala. Of course, he knew that was ridiculous; Sam falling apart like that didn't necessarily mean a good thing. But—maybe it could be. Wasn't that what was supposed to happen—you let the bad stuff out so the good stuff could grow? If so, then he and Sam would rebuild…everything. Together. Dean stroked all the parts of Sam he could reach, smiled when Sam leaned into his touch, even asleep.

Dean could feel Sam starting to wake after a bit. He shifted to his side, still not quite awake, and slowly pushed his hips into Dean, sleepily rocking against his thigh. 

"Um, Sam, hold up," Dean muttered and tried to ease out from under the tangle of gangly little brother, but Sam snagged his arm, pushing and tugging Dean until they were facing each other, which meant now Dean's dick was nudged up against Sam's. Of course, Dean's dick tried to express its interest in the situation. Dean figured he could hardly pretend that he hadn't just fattened up in no seconds flat just from brushing against Sam, so he shrugged. "Good…morning?"

Sam stared at him for a long moment, his face set in a blank mask and then, a slow, tentative smile bowed his lips. "Can I, I want…" he said, and inched forward.

It took a million years for Sam to cross those few inches, forever before he touched his lips to Dean's. The kiss was a dry, brief brush against Dean's mouth, but like that time after the hunt when Sam had pressed a kiss into Dean's palm, it affected him way more than it should—made him go hard as stone.

"Damn, Sam, really, I gotta get up, c'mon," he groaned. Sam ignored him completely and took another kiss; a bit more than a gentle brush this time, and Dean's lips parted under the pressure of Sam's. The sly sweep of the tip of Sam's tongue struck sparks all through him. The way Sam teased him, tormented him with kisses, lit Dean on fire.

Dean was surprised by Sam's… _seductive_ …approach. He'd expected something totally different, something…wild. Frantic. A wet mash of lips…or violent, gnawing, aggressive bites. Instead, Sam kissed like he'd spent his whole life waiting to do just this…the way Sam carefully, calculatedly, scraped teeth against tender skin, the way he sucked Dean's tongue, had Dean shaking. Sam nipped and Dean's dick jerked with it; he cupped himself and squeezed, pulsed with every slow, hot, wet kiss. Sam's mouth made him weak, left him burning with the need to have more.

Sam threaded his fingers though Dean's hair and tugged, so Dean let him lead. When Sam moved from open-mouthed kisses messily tracing the tense bow of Dean's neck to a sharp snap over his pulse, the contrast between pain and pleasure pulled a groan out of Dean—startled him out of the daze he'd slipped into and he tried to pull away. 

Sam was not on board with Dean moving away. He held tight, nipping his way back up to Dean's mouth, soothing each nip with a swipe of his tongue. Each kiss was more delicious than the last; Dean's tongue slid against Sam's, in and out of Sam's mouth like an imitation of fucking. Sam inhaled suddenly like he'd read Dean's mind and leaked a moan into the kiss. All the while he slowly, slowly, eased his hand into Dean's lap. He worked the damp fabric of his boxers aside, fingers stroking over his balls—Dean had some vague idea that they should slow down, but the more Sam touched him, the more his higher brain functions dribbled away. Sam just made it too easy to stop thinking, the way he was easing his way downwards, kisses scattered from Dean's throat to his chest to his belly, lower and lower…Sam's breath washed hot and damp over the crown of his dick before Dean's brain engaged again. 

 

"Sam—don't."

"No, Dean," Sam said, an edge of desperation in his voice. "I'm good at this. You'll like it." Sam stared up at him; his bottom lip clenched in his teeth and his hair a wild halo around his face. 

Dean glared at Sam. "No. I mean it—now come back up here."

Sam slithered back up and flopped onto his back, glaring at the ceiling like he wanted to kill it with his mind. Dean sighed. "Damn it, nothing I say ever comes out right…" He reached for the waist of Sam's boxers, and said, "I'm not mad and I'm sure you're, y'know…good. At that." Sam huffed and glared back at Dean, but lifted his hips obligingly when Dean nudged him to. He gulped when Dean pulled his boxers off. The mood changed completely. Sam wasn't annoyed anymore, instead he tensed and immediately rolled over onto his belly. He hitched his ass up, buried his face in his arms and spread his legs wide, like a sacrifice. It wasn't the least bit arousing, in fact, it was heartbreaking, and the worst kind of buzzkill, Dean thought. Sam…Sam constantly had Dean on an emotional seesaw.

After a sort but ridiculous struggle—trying to turn the kid was like trying to unroll a pillbug—Dean got Sam on his back again. He rubbed his finger between Sam's eyebrows, smoothing out the knot of worry and confusion there. "Unh-unh. Let me do something for you first, okay? Trust me." 

Sam gnawed at his lip before giving Dean an uncertain nod, and then gasped like he'd been punched when Dean wrapped his hand around Sam's dick and kissed away the slick welling up at the tip. Dean mouthed wet and sloppy at the head and Sam jumped, yelped, and then laughed softly like he was embarrassed about jumping. Dean liked that, that Sam was comfortable enough to react openly. Liked more how Sam unraveled bit by bit as he traced the length of Sam's dick with wet kisses, until Sam was dripping and Dean's hand worked up and down easily. He enjoyed the silky-smooth shift of skin over hardness, the weight and warmth of Sam's dick in his hand. Enjoyed the way Sam blinked and gasped and quivered. He squeezed, and Sam groaned his name. Dean smirked. "Yeah? Like that, do ya?" Dean figured he was owed some payback for Sam teasing him like he had…it was Dean's turn now. 

Sam shivered and whimpered, his hips jerking into Dean's hold. Dean let him go, chuckled when Sam moaned, "No…no stopping, Dean."

"Not going anywhere, promise." He jerked his boxers off, tossing them over the side of the bed. Sam watched him intently, his eyes darting over Dean, from face to dick and back again. He licked his lips and tried to reach for Dean but he grabbed Sam's wrists and held them over his head, slotted himself between Sam's legs. 

_Sam…_ Dean stared down at him, tracking all the changes since he'd found him. Sam was going to be a giant one day, Dean thought, grow even taller than Dean. He was getting a little bit of fat between bone and skin, just enough to make him look sleek and streamlined and less like the tortured wire sculpture he'd been when Dean first saw him. Dean growled. Fucking hell, the boy was hot—Dean wasn't even going to look at the tangled, fucked-up, _wrong_ rat's nest of his thoughts. This was his Sam. "All mine," Dean growled and Sam threw his head back against the pillows, spread his legs wide as he could. He rubbed against Dean like a cat in heat, but he was trembling, fearfully, and that brought Dean crashing out of his racing fantasies and back to real life. 

Sam was nervous—or scared. He was barely half-hard; Dean realized Sam was just presenting himself the way he'd been taught to, and his stomach did a queasy roll. He pulled back, rubbing slow, soft arcs, back and forth across Sam's belly, his chest, up and down his ribs. "Shhh," Dean murmured. "Relax, babe, relax…."

Sam's dick fattened up again under Dean's touch; he pushed into Dean's caresses and Dean had a feeling at this moment, he should definitely take the wheel. He shimmied down Sam's body, ignoring Sam's little shocked, dismayed noises. "Quiet, I'm the boss and I do what I want." He cocked an eyebrow at Sam and mock-scowled. That brought a wobbly but real smile out of Sam. "Better," Dean winked, then dragged the flat of his tongue up Sam's dick. Sam almost levitated he flinched so hard, and Dean got a thick blurt of precome across his lips. He grinned at Sam and licked it off, and went for him again. 

Sam jerked wildly and shoved his dick right down Dean's throat, a move Dean hadn't been expecting, and the coughing and gagging freaked Sam out again. Dean didn’t let go though, he worked his tongue and lips around Sam, sucking up the slick that seemed to just pour out of the kid. He had to pin Sam flat to the bed with the way he was writhing all over, balling up the blankets and sheets and narrowly avoiding nailing Dean with flailing legs and arms. Dean held him down and sucked his dick like it was going to be the last thing he did in life. Sam strained against Dean's hold, howled long and _loud_ —came like he was dying. He shuddered and moaned and his dick jerked and jerked what felt like forever, and Dean kissed and licked and mouthed Sam before he finally hissed, "Dean, please," and Dean let him go. 

Dean sat up, his own dick so hard it hurt. He palmed it and got a handful of slick he worked up and down the shaft, slow and careful. "I guess it's been a while since you've done that, hunh? Unless I'm just that good," he grinned down at Sam's awestruck face.

"I've never done that," Sam said. "It was…" he shuddered and moaned and Dean thought he might lose it right there. It took a moment before what Sam said percolated through the fog of lust.

"Wait, what…but I thought… you and the other kids, the pack, you know."

 

Sam shook his head. "No, we only ever did that thing you did at Uncle Luke's parties. Uncle liked me to do it to him but he never did it back, no one did..." Sam lifted his eyes to Dean. "The pack, we just used hands, sometimes. And we kissed. Kissing was the best. But this…" he cupped himself and his eyes drifted shut again. "Only you."

"You fuckin' got that right," Dean muttered. "And for god's sake, stop calling that pervert motherfucker 'Uncle'." Sam nodded, but he had that slightly blank look on his face that said Dean's words meant squat-all to him and Dean sighed. It was okay, Sam would get it someday soon. He stroked himself again and Sam batted Dean's fingers out of the way, wrapped his fingers around Dean's dick instead. Dean pushed into the tunnel of Sam's fingers, rolling his hips, breathing harder. It was good, a little too good.

"Wait," he said and he eased out of Sam's grip. Sam went stiff again; Dean felt his heart race under his hand. "Shhh," Dean said and lowered himself over Sam. He took the moment to steal a kiss and began moving, his dick skating over Sam's abs, rocking into Sam. Sam reached down and pressed his hand over Dean's dick so that it was trapped against the taut skin and Sam's hot, smooth palm. It slid, slick and easy through sweat and precome and it was perfect—just what Dean wanted. Sam watched, they both watched, the flushed, glistening head of his dick slide in and out of view. Dean shuddered with the waves of sensation scorching through him, he'd felt close to the edge forever and this, the way Sam watched so hungrily, knocked him right over the edge. His balls drew up tight and he groaned, "I'm—fuck—coming, Sam—now!"

Sam gasped and came again just as Dean let go. Dean moaned and collapsed against Sam, sliding through the mess between them, while Sam panted his name in his ear, and his fingers moved in loops and squiggles across his back. He wondered what Sam was saying…. 

When he finally got the breath and the brain-power to speak, Dean asked, "You okay, Sam? You feel all right?"

Sam looked at Dean like he was crazy. "Yes, very much…did…did you like it?" Sam carefully wiped himself with a balled up wad of sheet, refolded it to a clean section and passed the sheet to Dean. "The fucking part. We can do that. If you want. I mean, when you want."

Dean wiped himself less carefully, and tossed the sheet to the floor, ignoring the small, displeased grunt Sam made. "As far as I'm concerned, that _was_ the fucking part." He laughed. "I'm all about feeling good, and having the person I'm with feel good too. And I _loved_ making you feel good."

Sam slid across the bed until he was pressed against Dean's side. "You did that. You always do that. I'm so lucky, Dean. I hope you feel that."

Something grew hot and full in Dean's chest and washed through him from head to toe; he had to think about it to identify the feeling—it was joy. _This_ was what he'd expected to feel like when he shot Azazel; he hadn't known that revenge never brought joy, not like this. 

So Sam might never remember anything about his life before, and Sam might never forget what he went through, but he was still tough as nails and strong as hell. Most important, Sam _wanted_ to be happy and he wanted to be with Dean…that was good enough, good enough for beginnings and middles and maybe even for happy endings. It could happen. He looked at Sam, let himself enjoy the sight of Sam relaxed, radiating contentment…he traced the shape of Sam's face, flicked his fingers across his lips and Sam snorted, narrowed his eyes like a pleased cat. Dean smiled—until his finger skimmed the tattoo under Sam's eye, and suddenly that was all he could see. 

"We, unh, can take that off of you," Dean said. "I can afford to do that, the ones on your arms and shoulder, too…we can take them all off."

"Why?" Sam asked, nothing but mild curiosity in his voice.

"Why? Why? Because—because they're like… _slave_ marks. Don’t you want them gone? Azazel put them there, to show…they're…."

Sam shrugged. "They're not important," he said and stretched, rolled upright. "Do they bother you?" he asked and again he seemed only slightly curious. There was no heat in his voice at all, none in his face.

"How can they _not_ bother you?" Dean demanded. 

"The Owner's dead," Sam replied. "In this world and the next. When you shot him, you unmade him." At Dean's nod, he went on, "I can't belong to nothing, so these marks mean nothing. Maybe…since you killed him, they mean I belong to you now. Anyway, I don’t care. Unless you want me to," he said, and finally looked concerned.

"But, Sam…okay. Yes. I want them off you. I know there's no power in them, but—" Dean grimaced and Sam chuckled softly. "What do they mean, do you know?" Dean couldn't stop touching the damn things—he laid his open hand over the marks on Sam's shoulder, covering them, hiding them.

"Some, yes—some no. The crowns are kills. They were generals. I was a general too. The Owner said so," and Dean's blood ran cold with how…almost _proud_ Sam sounded. "The Owner thought he was unkillable, but you…" The look Sam gave Dean made his face go hot. "You killed him." He covered the hand Dean had on the tattoos with his own. "Now they mean nothing."

But Dean couldn't think that way. Sam dropped back to his side and curled around Dean, a soft huff of contentment ghosting over Dean's skin. Dean traced the brand on Sam's shoulder, the sigil that kept Sam free of possession. It was the only thing on his body that didn't make Dean want to vomit. Even his scars, so much like Dean's own, made him sick. They had such a different meaning to them than to Dean's own, terribly different. 

He listened to Sam's breath go slow and steady and slip into the rhythm of sleep. He blinked hard; no way was he going to cry, much as he wanted to. He ground the heel of his hand into his eyes. What would it have been like if Sam had never been taken? Their lives would have been so different; he could only imagine that their lives would have been so much better. Sam snuffled against Dean's chest, threw a thigh over his and sighed back into deep sleep. Dean cupped Sam's head, pressed a kiss into his hair. _Got you back…nothing else matters, nothing else in the world._

=+=

The sun was a pale gold disk, low in the sky. It was still chilly; the grass sparkled with tiny drops of water and chilled his toes as well. Sam trotted across the lawn and down to a wooden dock leading out into the water. Dean's lake was tiny, nothing like the huge lake where Sam had learned to swim. The house was tiny, too, but it was wonderful. It was a place that fit him. Behind all the doors, there were nothing but good things. Dean's house was full of light and life, and that made it a million times better than any of Uncle Luke's houses. Sam liked it, all of it. He liked that he could see the shore on all sides of the lake, and how easy it was to swim from shore to shore. He liked that when he sometimes needed time alone, he could sit in the room Dean said was his. From that room he could still clearly hear Dean banging around in the kitchen, or walking about in their bedroom. Sam woke up every morning to the smell of coffee and bacon. Dean never, _ever_ made oatmeal.

Sam sat on one side of the dock and kicked his feet back and forth. A bird landed on the old boat tied at the dock and trilled at him—a challenge that made Sam smile. Dean had pointed the boat out to Sam the first day they came to the lake, told Sam that it was his and they'd take it out one day, and they had. Every day, they took the boat out and Dean did that thing he called fishing that never seemed to involve actual fish, while Sam stared at the water or closed his eyes and pretended that he could still feel Dean in his head…. 

Across the way, Sam could see Dean's neighbors starting their days, lights blinking on, doors opening, closing…that was different, too. With Uncle, he'd been separated from other people. He remembered thinking, wondering, if Uncle and his men were the only real people in the world. Sam sighed, laughed a little. And then there'd been Dean, more real than…anything.

Sam got back up and walked to the top of the dock. He faced the lake. The sun was higher, the grass was drying, and he could tell it was going to be a hot day. Sam lifted his head back, closed his eyes and let the sun warm his face. It felt good. 

One…two…three…Sam let out a yell and ran back down the dock like a wyvern was chasing him. When his foot touched the end, he launched himself into the air—for one delirious second he was flying and then he hit the water with an explosive splash. 

The cold hit him like a sledge hammer—he arrowed to the surface and broke out shouting. He fell back into the water, laughing. His arms and legs were spread wide, and as he floated in slow circles, he couldn't stop laughing, laughing….

Dean was standing on the end of the dock when Sam opened his eyes again. He looked like he was frowning and he was shaking his head. For one quick, shattering moment, Sam thought that Dean was really angry. But when Sam really looked at Dean, he could see that his eyes were glowing. Dean was happy, and Dean was happy because Sam was happy. He walked down to the end of the dock and leaned over, waited until Sam swam up and pulled himself up on his elbows on the end of the dock. Dean knelt to kiss Sam, and Sam kissed him back, loving how warm Dean's mouth was, how sweet and soft. His Dean.

"C'mon in," Dean said, "breakfast is ready. Though it shoulda been you making breakfast for me, since you got up first."

Sam nodded. That was true. "Next time."

"I bet." Dean turned and walked back to the house. 

_Their_ house.

6-10-2013

Artist: delicioussakura


End file.
